An Ideal Husband and Creating Emotion in Your Audience

When you are writing your script or novel or producing your film or television show, what emotions are you wanting to inspire in your audience? Excitement, love, benevolence, anger, fear, horror, tragedy, for example.

All creatives should work out explicitly what they want their audience to think and feel. And then know how to induce these emotional reactions through their writing.

You don’t do this?

Then you are entering the creative arena part blind and will exit it not fully done.

Let’s consider one example of how this emotional “manipulation” was well done.

I recently enjoyed a very well written, produced and directed 1999 feature film adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s classic play, An Ideal Husband. The script was adapted and filmed by Oliver Parker, and starred Rupert Everett, Jeremy Northam, Cate Blanchett, Minnie Driver, and Julianne Moore.

As just one example of its emotional resonance, during the film and especially in its climax, I felt a range of positive afterglow emotions:

I was feeling benevolent about my fellow humans, after experiencing the conflicts, antics and wit of the high-level human beings in the story. I felt a sense of amused adventure at being in their lively, beautiful, and untainted-by-pain world. I was smiling because the story has some of Oscar Wilde’s very best golden lines, witty aphorisms and ironic comments that were extremely clever and often instructive. I was captivated by the ironies in the well-integrated two main plot lines of a great man wrongly considered an ideal husband, and of his best friend whose great life purpose is to remain single and idle. And I (spoiler!) cheered at the ending when this ideal husband, in fact all the lead characters, pretty much turned out to be good people. I also felt admiration for all the talents associated with this production and its excellent artistic elements. This adaptation of An Ideal Husband is art and benevolence at a mountain peak level. Oh so very nice to live in a world like that for a while, don’t you think? Such stories as these are those that we remember and revisit!

The Creative Takeaway

I’m not going to go into chapter and verse of how Wilde and the excellent talents involved in this film created those feelings; that is your homework! But here are some hints: Look at the intelligent positive theme, the charming and witty characters, the ingenuity and warmth of the character arcs, and the cleverness and ironies in the plotting.

My specific takeaway to you, dear creative, is two things: If you can, first watch this film as just a pure pleasure of humans and art finding their best selves. Then afterwards recollect the emotions you felt during the film and go back and watch it again and ask yourself during this replay:

What am I feeling, and how was I made to feel this?

After better understanding this writing issue of creating emotions, you may when writing your own stories apply a greater more deliberate skill to manipulate your audience to feel stronger emotions. Isn’t that a vital key to successful storytelling and story experiencing?

Here is the trailer to this enjoyable film adaptation of An Ideal Husband: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST4ne1nVK0w

Stories are ideas in action!

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