WRITING CHARACTERS WHO ARE EMOTIONAL VS. PASSIONATE

   *Note: when I use the word passionate, I am not referring to the romantic variety.

   If you ask anyone who knows me, they will tell you I'm not a very emotional individual. I'm pretty mellow, never lose my temper, and I can't really remember the last time I was at any emotional extreme. That said, I am a very passionate person. I become veritably manic when working on a project or pursuing some goal or such. One of my sisters on the, other hand, is VERY emotional. Several highs and lows are reached in any given day. But as far as passion goes, she's pretty even on that scale.

   Now what does this have to do with writing characters?

   There are lots of different types of people in the world, some are passionate, some are emotional, and some are a mix of both (there are also logical and insane character, but lets not worry about those right now). In my writing, most of my characters start out leaning more towards the passionate and less towards the emotional side of things. That's fine for first draft, but then I have to go back in and pick out who's going to be my emotional characters and 'fix' them. Writing emotions is not an easy thing for me, as it's never featured much in my own personal experience (watching people being emotional is not the same as feeling emotional). To fill in my experience gap, I always find someone who fits the character(s) I'm fixing and have them take a look at it ( hurray for beta readers).

   What I discovered while going through this process surprised me. Both groups, the emotional character and the passionate characters, do things for different reasons (not a surprise) but that there are a lot of times when their actions aren't all that different from one another.

   Both Passionate and Emotional characters can behave irrationally, and will often act on impulse. However, the emotional character will be driven by external motivators (Person A did something I did/didn't like, and so I feel the need to do something about it) whereas the passionate character will be driven by internal motivators (I want a certain outcome and Person A will/won't help me so I feel the need to do something about it).

   Often, emotional characters are less concerned with the right or wrong of a situation and are more concerned with their own self. Passionate characters will generally adhere to some kind of moral code (not necessarily a good one) and will defend it to a fault.

   So what are you? Are you emotional or passionate?