Primal Emotions

Here's a little tool based on Robert Plutchik's, The Nature of Emotions, to help you define the emotional state your character goes through when faced with an event. Plutchik said that, "stimulus events, either external or internal (as in dreams), act as primary triggers that start the emotion process going," and the "function of emotion is to restore the individual to a state of equilibrium when unexpected or unusual events create disequalibrium."

And as Blake Snyder always reminds us, make it PRIMAL. The chart shows PRIMAL stimulus events that even a caveman would identify with.

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