Sentimentality
Dec. 21st, 2004 09:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
odd_buttonsThe following is an excerpt from Part III of the book Making Shapely Fiction, by Jerome Stern. The first two parts are very much worth reading as well. The book is available in paperback.
Sentimentality
When writers try to manipulate their readers by making them feel emotions that the writers haven't honestly earned, we call the work sentimental. Certain situations will make readers teary-eyed -- the death of a child, the reunion of long-lost loved ones, the call to action of a group of unjustly oppressed people, the cruel disappointment of an old person, the self-sacrifice of a courageous animal. Using such scenes is like pushing a button that causes an emotional reflex.
Readers value fiction that moves them emotionally but may resent being set up and manipulated. Some stories, like those involving loss and grief, love and death, are intrinsically deeply toughing. In those cases, it's more effective to use restraint in your telling and to avoid overemphasizing what readers are already feeling.
Dwelling on the emotion along seems self-indulgently sentimental. These stories just tell us how bad the character felt -- how dark, how sad, how miserable, how pained, how gloomy. Some stories, especially those involving situations like the loss of a loved one, have been told so often that writers have a hard time making readers see them as anything but clichés. But a story can save itself from sentimentality by insight, humor, freshness, and specificity (perhaps even a dead pet story).
There have been interesting changes in attitudes toward the sentimental in fiction. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fiction emphasized sentimentality and often devoted itself to precipitating a good cry. This emphasis fades from serious literature in the twentieth century, when sentimentality is seen as cheap, melodramatic, and unsophisticated. The change may be due to the overexploitation of sentimental devices, not only in best-selling books, but in theater, movies, television, and popular song. Though sentimentality might not be admired, it's still dear to the heart of a vast audience (and pays its creators far better than irony likely eve will).
See Bathos, Cliché, "Don't Do This."
Sentimentality
When writers try to manipulate their readers by making them feel emotions that the writers haven't honestly earned, we call the work sentimental. Certain situations will make readers teary-eyed -- the death of a child, the reunion of long-lost loved ones, the call to action of a group of unjustly oppressed people, the cruel disappointment of an old person, the self-sacrifice of a courageous animal. Using such scenes is like pushing a button that causes an emotional reflex.
Readers value fiction that moves them emotionally but may resent being set up and manipulated. Some stories, like those involving loss and grief, love and death, are intrinsically deeply toughing. In those cases, it's more effective to use restraint in your telling and to avoid overemphasizing what readers are already feeling.
Dwelling on the emotion along seems self-indulgently sentimental. These stories just tell us how bad the character felt -- how dark, how sad, how miserable, how pained, how gloomy. Some stories, especially those involving situations like the loss of a loved one, have been told so often that writers have a hard time making readers see them as anything but clichés. But a story can save itself from sentimentality by insight, humor, freshness, and specificity (perhaps even a dead pet story).
There have been interesting changes in attitudes toward the sentimental in fiction. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fiction emphasized sentimentality and often devoted itself to precipitating a good cry. This emphasis fades from serious literature in the twentieth century, when sentimentality is seen as cheap, melodramatic, and unsophisticated. The change may be due to the overexploitation of sentimental devices, not only in best-selling books, but in theater, movies, television, and popular song. Though sentimentality might not be admired, it's still dear to the heart of a vast audience (and pays its creators far better than irony likely eve will).
See Bathos, Cliché, "Don't Do This."