Emphasis

Emphasis.

Emphasis.

Emphasis.

If you can’t already tell, emphasis is the topic I will be covering today.

I’ve heard a lot of questions about how emphasis works.

What does emphasizing do?

How do you emphasize?

When should you emphasize?

Well, today I will give you my take on emphasis.

What in the world does emphasizing even do?

Well, as I put in my last post about how to resonate with your readers' emotions, emphasis is what gives a word extra meaning. It puts a strain on the certain word or sentence that is normally in a dramatic scene.

It even helps bring humor to a piece if you use it the right way.

Read this for me:

She walked around the corner, jolting to a stop as hot coffee spilled down the front of her shirt. She’d run into someone. Again. That was just dandy.

Now read it like this:

She walked around the corner, jolting to a stop as hot coffee spilled down the front of her shirt.

She’d run into someone.

Again.

That was just dandy.

Which one packs more of a punch?

The first or the second?

If you’ll notice, in the second I used the main two techniques of emphasis—we’ll talk about those in a minute—and that made the scene not run together so much.

Didn’t you really feel her frustration of running into someone in the second one? Could you imagine the annoyance coursing through her veins?

That’s part of what emphasis does.

It makes things more emotional.

It helps them pack a punch.

How do you emphasize?

This is the most common question I’ve heard.

Now, there are two main ways to emphasize.

Italics and paragraph breaks.

These are the main two ways you can emphasis will writing a book and today I’m going to go over each one for you.

Let’s start with italics.

You can use italics to put strain on one world in particular.

For example:

The car drove through the muddy puddle spraying me as it passed.

First off, this wasn’t just a regular old, muddy puddle.

This was a mud hole.

And second, the car didn’t just spray me.

It covered me.

In that section of words, I used both of the techniques of emphasis. But the italics really helped.

You know how in speech, we sometimes put a strain or emphasize a certain word to give what we’re saying more meaning?

Well, we do the same thing in writing.

Italics are an important thing to use because when writing, you may have a certain way the character says the words, but the reader isn’t going to know that unless you show them.

You may want this sentence to sound like this: He pushed me over. Me!

But unless you italicize, the reader’s not going to know that.

The reader could read it like this: He pushed me over. Me!

They could read it however they want if you don’t show them how it’s supposed to be read, how the character is actually saying it.

Things as simple as italic letters can also give hints to characters’ personalities.

Basically, they are one of the key things in writing a book.

Now paragraph breaks…

Paragraph breaks are the way to emphasize a sentence or even a word by separating it from the other words.

You might be thinking, “Well, Jocelyn, one sentence or one word is not a paragraph!”

Actually, it is.

A paragraph is not determined by the number of words or sentences.

You separate a sentence from the paragraph above, it’s a new paragraph. It doesn’t matter how many words or sentences it is.

These one-sentence paragraphs are called “one-liners”. They're very helpful for emphasizing.

Read these for me and decide which one packs more of a punch:

She stepped out of the car and walked towards the graveyard, already seeing the black clad priest holding his Bible. He was standing by the grave. His grave. The love of her life.

Or:

She stepped out of the car and walked towards the graveyard, already seeing the black clad priest holding his Bible. He was standing by the grave.

His grave.

The love of her life.

I’m guessing it was the second one, right?

See how I used paragraph breaks to emphasize those simple words?

It wasn’t even a ton of sentences or anything, just a few separated words. But didn’t that change the feeling of the scene?

Each word felt heavier.

You could feel the emotion of the character even though you don’t know the full story of what happened.

Emphasis with both italics and paragraph breaks changes the whole mood of the scene.

When should you use emphasis?

Basically, any time you want to convey strong emotion.

You can use it for humor, sadness, when a character is angry, during a big shock—you can use it for many different things.

Honestly, there is no wrong way to emphasize in my opinion.

Depending on how you use it, it will affect the scene differently.

And italics and paragraph breaks are different in general.

Italics put strain on words.

Paragraph breaks (one-liners) emphasize a certain section. They separate the words and make it’s meaning grow.

There really is no “wrong” place for emphasis.

But if you use it too heavy-handed, it could lose it’s punch just as any writing technique could.

I hope you all learned a little something about emphasis in this post! If you have any questions or have a subject you'd like to get my take on, just message me in the contact bar below.

Happy writing!

-Jocelyn