Lisa Cron

It is emotion, rather than logic, that telegraphs meaning, thus emotion is what your novel must be wired to transmit, straight from the protagonist to us.

e’re wired to crave, hunt for, and latch onto what the protagonist feels, so that we can experience his struggles as if they were our own. When we’re lost in a novel, the protagonist’s internal struggle becomes ours, as do his hard-won truths. This is not a metaphor, but a fact. According to Jonathan Gottschall, author of The Storytelling Animal, functional MRI (fMRI) studies reveal that when we’re reading a story, our brain activity isn’t that of an observer, but of a participant.

Understanding the motivation behind what someone does is what gives it meaning.