How Do You Write About People's Emotions?

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The place where the action happens is largely inside someone's brain in their emotions. What are techniques that you've found to bring that to life and also to get people to tell you about what they were experiencing inside their brains? A lot of times I'll sort of use things that the person has said as a jumping off point so that I already know that this is something that they were thinking about at a given point in time but there's so much amazing like novel writing about people's interior lives that I don't think I mean.

Rachel Aviv is a staff writer for The New Yorker. Her new book is Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us.

“I used to feel that if I knew everything, that was a good sign. And I've become more aware that if you know everything you want to argue, that's not such a good sign…. Do I have a genuine question? Is there something I’m trying to figure out? Then the story is worth telling. But if I don’t really have a question or if my question is already answered, then maybe that should give you pause.”

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