The truth about "generating" emotion in emails

--> and what got me emotional today

You hear a lot from writing experts about how you need to trigger emotions with your writing. Because emotion is what engages your readers and emotion is what drives sales.

But my experience is that the techniques they share to pump emotion into your writing rarely work.

Let me explain why. In fact, let me demonstrate why…

We drove down to Kathy’s mum’s today (or yesterday by the time you read this).

That meant I spent 45 minutes listening to the first half of the Newcastle game on the radio. Hearing us go 1-0 up in 5 minutes. Then losing yet another player to injury. Then hearing West Ham equalise, then take the lead.

By the time we’d picked our eldest up from the station we were 1-3 down and we were already bemoaning our luck, injuries, the referee and anyone else we could think of to blame.

But then we pulled one back. Then two substitutions later we had an equaliser..and then a winner.

An absolute rollercoaster of emotion.

All of it generated by listening to words on the radio.

But it wasn’t the choice of words of the presenters that created that emotion. It didn’t matter a jot that they described the match as thrilling or nail-biting. or even that the pitch of their voice got higher and higher as the goals went in.

What generated the emotion was the events on the field.

My team going ahead, then behind, then coming back from a seemingly impossible situation.

The emotion - excitement, fear, despair, hope then joy - came because the events those words described were full of excitement, fear, despair, hope and joy. Not particularly because of the words used to describe those events.

And it’s the same when you’re writing an email - or anything really.

The degree to which you grip your audience and generate emotion is largely based on what’s actually happening in your emails.

You want to build empathy? Tell a story people can empathise with.

Hope? Show them something hopeful.

Want to inspire them? Show them something inspirational.

You get the idea.

Your choice of words and how you describe things can help. But the main engine of what your readers feel is the story you tell, not the words you use to tell it.

So rather than agonising over clever word choice, spend more time coming up with a better story.

- Ian