No one is immune to deep-rooted emotional triggers. Thanks to the fact that we all have light and dark moments from our pasts, a boring experience for one person can trigger a deluge of tears for the person standing beside them.
Apparently, the classic Disney movie, The Little Mermaid, is a trigger for me. I found this out on a plane to Kauai.
I'm not a fan of long flights. Sitting in the same position, even though I'm short, cramps up my knees. After a few hours, I want to move—maybe walk a few miles. Not possible when you have one narrow row, a handful of flight attendants, and snack carts blocking the way.
So, I do what everyone does; I sit there and try to find any possible means of mental escape.
On flights to Hawaii, I often watch Moana if it's available in the movie rotation. On that particular flight, I scrolled through the movie list and landed on The Little Mermaid. Something stirred inside me. I hadn't seen the movie all the way through in about twenty years. When I was small, it had been my favorite—a VHS tape I watched and rewound enough to break our VCR. Multiple times.
This also may be where I developed a slight obsession with planning for the future. Back then, I learned to rewind a VHS tape as soon as I was done with it, or I would have to wait several minutes the next time I wanted to watch it. To a six-year-old, several minutes of listening to a machine wind and groan while "loading" my entertainment was an eternity.
Yes, I'm that old. Moving on...
I tapped The Little Mermaid on that tiny seatback screen and stuck my headphones in. The light music began to play, tracking with seagulls flying in the clouds. Then prince Eric's ship appears below. That tightness in my chest made its way upward. Pages in my memory turned with each passing scene. I remembered every sound effect, every word the sailors spoke. My throat grew tight. By the time that lucky fish managed to smack its way out of the fisherman's hand, I was blinking away tears.
Then, the soothing song under the sea played, following the fish until the mermaids showed up. At this point, I had given myself a pressure headache just trying to keep my expression neutral and cheeks dry.
I almost lost it over some animated fish people going to watch the equivalent of an underwater musical.
What the heck happened? One minute I'm on a plane, doing anything I can to forget I have five hours left to Hawaii, and the next, I'm trying to contain myself from becoming an emotional mess on my husband and the stranger in the seat beside me.
Over a children's movie. Nothing sad even happened yet.
This is the exact definition of an emotional trigger. We aren't always aware of what form they take or when they may strike. Believe me, if I knew that would happen, I would have chosen a different movie. Crying outside an empty room or a closet is something I avoid to great extremes. Problem was, I wanted to ride that emotional wave and remember the bits of the movie missing from my head. I wanted to fill in those gaps and return to six-year-old me...
Six-year-old me who lived in the wonderful house her parents built beside the river.
Six-year-old me who used to swim in her pool, then sit on the deck with her sister and friend, folding colorful beach towels into the shape of mermaid tails over our legs.
Six-year-old me who had never experienced what it was like to live a separate life from the people in her own home.
Six-year-old me who had not yet witnessed the dark cloud of great loss or the devastation it left in the people around me.
That dang movie transported me back to the only time I could remember my family being happy together. It was no longer a brilliantly animated story of a mermaid finding love and her place in the world; it was a story entwined with several stages of my own happiness, grief, and maturity.
I didn't get to choose that reaction. I couldn't play it off, either. After the credits rolled, I was wrecked as all those emotions shot through me. By the end, I wanted to cry happy tears. Even after all those hardships, broken relationships, and scars, God brought me to that moment on the plane. There I sat beside my husband of ten years, taking an extended trip into paradise that many people may never be able to afford.
Without all that character-shaping past pain and loss, I wouldn't have been zooming over the Pacific toward one of the most beautiful places on the planet.
Before I loaded up Moana, I thanked God for it all: the early seasons of joy, the grief, the broken relationships, the permanent damage, the woman I became as a result. Out of that great mess, he brought me to a place of love. And seeing what he'd done in my family in the past, I know he can still mend what's still broken if he chooses.
But then I also thought, what a great character-building exercise. As an author, I need to know these things about my characters. What finally breaks them and brings them into that involuntary emotional response? Answering that question could shape the climax of an entire novel.
Here's an excellent example.
In the Pixar movie, Ratatouille, the harsh food critic, Anton Ego, presents the main characters with a frightening choice: create a dish that leaves him speechless, or he would leave the restaurant a scathing review. The main characters scramble to plan an impressive dish but finally settle on a humble "peasant dish" called ratatouille. When Anton Ego receives the meal, he stares at it deadpan. Then, he stabs a bite of tender, baked veggies and places it in his mouth.
Instantly, Anton's eyes go wide. We are transported inside his head to a younger version of him, standing with scraped knees beside a bike. His mother sits him down at the table with a bowl of ratatouille, and little Anton smiles and eats. End flashback.
This memory is so impactful, the viewer learns more of Anton in those ten seconds or so than in all the other appearances and rumors about him throughout the movie. And because of that trigger, Anton smiles and digs into his meal with smiles and audible noises of approval. He became an entirely different character. Viewers not only "saw" him, they could now relate to this "villain" character who had previously earned the descriptions of stiff, angry, scary, and unfeeling.
That's what can happen when anyone's senses are saturated with just the right recipe of feelings and memories. That's what I experienced on the plane. It's a beautiful part of life and one of the reasons no two people could ever be alike. Take identical twins and put them in the same situation. Afterward, ask them to write what they experienced, and the results would differ.
We can look or act in similar ways, we can go through the same pain, but no one experiences—or responds to—life in the exact same way.
So, creators, what is that trigger for your characters? Can you reach into your own pasts and snatch some inspiration? I plan on using my little plane episode for something, though I'm not sure what yet. Now that I know what The Little Mermaid can do to me, I'm curious to see if my reaction is the same the next time I watch it. Maybe it will differ if I see it coming? Or maybe I'll be just as wistful. Time will tell.
Keep on smilin'!
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