Emotion 1: Emotional cause and effect

We've been looking at how characters respond emotionally to events.

But let's take this further: emotional responses drive behaviour, which cause new events, which trigger new emotional responses, and so on in a continuous feedback loop.

(This is true in life as well as in story.)

A basic emotion-behaviour loop looks like this:

What do these terms mean?

• Trigger: Something happens.
• Emotion: We have an emotional reaction.
• Behaviour: We do something in response, which often sets up the next trigger.

Take this panel from Usagi Yojimbo again:

• What are the trigger, emotion, and behaviour?
• And how long do you think the loop takes? (They can be very fast!)

Sometimes these loops are 'bigger' and take longer.

For example, here are a couple of pages from Persepolis.

The first page is for context: it shows the process for getting the much-hated King of Iran to leave the country.

What's the emotional loop for the crowd on the second page? And how long do you think it takes?

(Right-click to see bigger and read the text.)

That's the basic emotion-behaviour loop.

Now let's dig a little deeper.