Don’t make characters weep

Up: Fiction writing

According to Ingermanson,¹¹1 Randall Ingermanson and Peter Economy, Writing Fiction For Dummies (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2010).  writing is about delivering an emotional experience:

[…] we’re convinced that entertainment can be boiled down to one thing: giving the reader a powerful emotional experience.

It is likely for the same reason that Thayer²²2 James Thayer, “Learning and getting better at the craft of writing,” March 2, 2022, in Essential Guide to Writing a Novel, podcast.  suggests not making characters weep:

If the writer gives a character a reason to weep, and she weeps, then the reader won’t have to. But if the writer gives a character a reason to weep, and she holds it in, the reader will weep.