The Brilliance of Pumpkin Spice Latte

And what it means to your writing

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Photo by Braden Collum on Unsplash

I was waxing poetic the other day about fall and how much I love it and I admitted to already having consumed several pumpkin spice lattes from Starbucks. For me, and many others these days, autumn and pumpkin spice lattes are practically one and the same thing. Thinking about PSLs led me to thinking about what I loved so much about fall.*

I came up with a whole list (and stick with me here, because this relates to writing, I promise):

—Because back to school time feels like a fresh start, no matter that I’m long past school age.

—It’s a time of change and transition and something inside me thrills to that.

—And yet, it’s also time to get back to a steady routine.

—I love the gorgeous yellows, oranges, and reds of the leaves turning color.

—More creative time. Fall means the onset of early dark and cozy nights to knit or stitch

—Pumpkin carving!

—Apple cider pressing with our friends who have an orchard on their homestead

—There might be a trip to the pumpkin patch on a nearby island where all the trees will be in full fall color and there will be beautiful fields and farm animals, too.

As for pumpkin spice lattes, I love them because:

—They are rich and spicy and creamy

—Drinking them warms my innards.

—The smell!

—Spending time with my daughter, because we go get them together

—When Starbucks releases their PSLs in September (though I think it was late August this year), it’s a sign that fall is here—or on the way! Change coming!

So all of this is by way of saying that Starbucks is not selling a coffee drink, they are selling an experience. And not only that, an emotional experience. Honestly, I enjoy the taste of PSLs, but what is far more important to me is what they signify. You could probably get me to drink a dirt and slug latte if you triggered the right emotions in me.

And, wait for it—that is our job as writers, too. To trigger emotion. To make the reader feel. To ignite an experience within them. To move them. Readers read novels to be entertained, to escape, to experience different lives and worlds. And the whole branding and marketing of PSLs is a perfect example of that. That’s not pumpkin spice latte you’re drinking, but rather an emotional experience.

Further, this is not only our job as writers, but our job as marketers. You want to put an emotion on the page that then ignites an emotion within a reader that will cause them to push the buy now button or pick up your book and walk with it to the cash register. (Do we still call them that anymore? If not, what do we call them?)

But how do we do this?

Ha! The million dollar question. Volumes have been written about this. And as such, I’m going to list some resources below. But I also have a couple ideas myself.

• Know your character. You have to start by understanding how your characters are feeling before you can share that feeling. This is the lynchpin.** You can get to know your character through planning their wants, the obstacles to those wants, their motivations, their conflicts. All the usual suspects. But in my mind, you really get to truly understand your characters through actual writing—in the draft and also often with a healthy dose of side writing.

• Look to yourself. Often the strongest emotions we can give our characters are those we’ve experienced ourselves. When we do this, there’s an authenticity that readers pick up. You don’t have to use the exact emotional experience, just an echo of it. For instance, maybe you moved a lot as a kid and had a hard time making friends. That could translate into a character whose emotional wound is having difficulty with romantic relationships.

• Find moments of strong emotional impact to guide you. One of my favorite writers on character, David Corbett, often writes about this and I learned it from him. Again, often you can figure this out by looking at your own life. What’s a strong emotional experience you remember? And while it may be your wedding day or the birth of a child or a divorce, that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about the wounds that drive deep, sometimes from small experiences you wouldn’t expect to affect you much.

  Here’s an example from my own life. When I was in first grade, I mastered the magical ability of learning to read. I told one of my classmates this. I don’t remember her name but I remember where we were standing when I told her this—in the back of our classroom in a portable on the school grounds. Whoever she was, this girl scorned me. She sneered at me, disbelieving, when I told her I could read. No matter what I said, she didn’t believe me. Luckily, her reaction didn’t turn me off reading. But what it did do, I’m quite sure, is establish a lifelong pattern of doubting myself and my abilities. This is writing gold to draw on.

And also

You may not nail this emotion thing on your first try, ie, rough draft. To me, it is often something that I only start to fully grasp as I write. It’s okay to layer it in as you write, go back and drop emotional reactions in, and even do a whole draft pass to add in the emotional core of the story.

But—you may get lucky and nail most of it the first time through, too!

Resources

10 Ways to Show Character Emotions. Excellent article from the authors of the Emotion Thesaurus, which is also an excellent resource.

The 3 Ways to Show Emotion. Spoiler alert: the three ways are, telling, showing through body langauge and showing through thinking. But the article does go into more detail.

Hooked on a Feeling. An oldie but goodie from my fave, David Corbett.

So now, please do tell. Do you struggle with getting character emotion on the page? Do you have a way to access your character’s emotions you can share? Please comment or reply!

*For some people fall is a melancholy time because leaves are dying and plants are going to seed. Along with the coming of early dark, it’s enough to make some people sad. I understand that and I sympathize, but have never felt it. And this is an example of different ways people and your characters might react emotionally.

**Apparently the most common spelling of this word is now linchpin. Who knew? I prefer it with a y.