Yearning

Yearning is a deep, lasting longing for something out of reach; in fiction, it is the human lack beneath a character's specific goals that those goals are attempts to satisfy.

In everyday English, yearning means a deep, lasting longing, usually for something out of reach: a person, a home, a time that is gone. To yearn is the verb (he yearned for the sea), and yearningly is the adverb (she looked yearningly at the harbour). It is stronger than wanting, and it tends to ache.

Yearning in fiction

Writers use the word in a more specific craft sense. The novelist Robert Olen Butler puts yearning at the centre of character in From Where You Dream: fiction is about human beings who yearn, and the events are what that yearning drives them into. (It is the chapter the editor behind this site singles out in his writing book recommendations.) A goal answers what does this character do next. A yearning answers why has this person been like this their whole life.

Yearning vs want

The practical difference is duration. Wants are satisfiable and local: get the job, reach the border, win the argument. Yearnings do not resolve: to be forgiven, to be seen, to belong somewhere, to be safe, to matter to someone. A character can achieve every goal in the book and still be reaching, which is why the ending of a well-built story so often grants the want and leaves the yearning exposed. See want versus need for how the two pull against each other.

Examples

• A surgeon who wants the head of department job, and yearns to be good enough for a mother who never said so.
• A thief who wants one last score, and yearns for a home he has never had.
• A girl who wants to win the spelling bee, and yearns for her parents to stop fighting long enough to watch.

In each, the want gives the plot a direction and the yearning gives each choice a cost.

Using it in your draft

It is the fastest repair for a protagonist who is competent and uninteresting. Such characters usually have objectives and no longing, so nothing they do costs them anything internally. Name what the person has always been short of, and their choices start to carry weight, including the bad ones.

Yearning surfaces in interiority more than in dialogue, because people state their goals and conceal their longings, often from themselves.

Frequently asked questions

What does yearningly mean?

Yearningly is the adverb from yearning. It means in a way that shows deep longing, as in 'she looked yearningly at the lit windows of the house she grew up in.'

What is the difference between yearning and longing?

They are close synonyms. Yearning usually suggests something deeper, more persistent and more painful, often for a person, a place or a time that cannot be got back.

How is yearning different from a character's want?

A want is a specific goal that can be reached, such as getting the job. A yearning is the lasting lack underneath it, such as wanting to matter to someone, and it usually outlives any single goal.