I love a well-written story. There are certain authors who possess special God-given talents for telling tales of the fictional sort. Daniel Woodrell owns an amazing skill with the narrative voice. Read Winter's Bone and tell me he's not brilliant. Stephen Geez operates in another realm when it comes to plotting and dialogue.

But what about emotion? Who are those masters that are able to translate honest emotion onto pages? By honest emotion I mean, a story so real and so raw, the reader is powerless to hold back tears or anger or that laugh-out-loud moment that draws attention to self. With movies it's easier. A good actor becomes that emotion and draws the audience in, daring them not to cry or be filled with righteous indignation. See Sean Penn in Mystic River when he finds out his daughter is lying dead in the park.

A novel or short story, well, that's a difficult thing--making a reader cry. Words are indeed strong enough to jab and scar and hurt. But the author must be skillful in pulling it all together to be worthy of my tears.

Every so often I find a story that holds a scene or two that puts a lump in my throat and has me reaching for the Kleenex box. Barbara Kingsolver got me with her masterpiece The Poisonwood Bible. The scene involves the death of the youngest daughter in a missionary's family doing the Lord's work in 1950s Congo. The five-year-old, narrating the moment in her own words, is bitten by a black mamba. Kingsolver skillfully lures readers in, introduces us to this family, allows us to grow fond of this little girl, before snatching her from the very pages of her book. We mourn with the mother as she lovingly washes her baby's body, preparing her for burial. It's heartbreaking--even without film footage, photos, or illustrations. Those words are powerful. This is the skill I'm talking about.

So rare are those types of talents, coming along only every-so-often. And that doesn't mean you're great when and if you can make readers cry. There are plenty of amazing authors worthy of highest praise. It's going that extra mile, though, that raises a story into rarefied air, lays separation between it and other fine tales. Alice Sebold grabbed me with The Lovely Bones when Susie Salmon, the dead girl narrating her life and death, laments the loss of first love, senior prom, her wedding, or the birth of her own children. The reader, in only a handful of sentences, feels every one of those losses. It takes a special talent to pull this off.

I've not accomplished this yet. I'm still learning, still trying. And I'm still looking for that next novel to come along and make me angry or make me cry or make me laugh out loud. Emotion is a hallmark of brilliant writing. Aim high, writers. Don't cheat your readers. Don't cheat yourselves.