The Oscars were on and dad expected me to be in bed. It was 1985. I sat in the dark, the light and volume turned down to almost black and silent, and my ear pressed to the television speaker. I didn’t get caught.
Acting never appealed to me, but storytelling was something else again. I love that feeling in my stomach and chest watching a good story. I’d go home wanting to keep that feeling. I’d like to create that feeling for someone else.
When you watch a good story, where do you feel it?
Marta Pelrine-Bacon 
I think I feel it in my brain. I’ll be thinking about it and wanting more and more of it for a while afterward. I did that with Stephen King’s The Dark Tower cycle. I thought I hated epics. I thought I really hated tomes strung together to make an epic. I loved that one. I thought so much about it, couldn’t get it out of my mind.
I guess that’s where I feel it.
The mind is a good place. It’s the feeling that counts.
Wow, what a question! I have never even thought about where I feel it when I watch or read a good story. I don’t know that I do “feel” it, like a physical feeling, per se. I know I get a deep sense of satisfaction, does that count? It’s like an exhale after holding your breath for a long time. 🙂
Sounds like it counts to me.
What Falc said: great, pull-the-rug-out question.
My answer is very similar to Darc’s, and The Dark Tower was a series that did it for me, too. Sometimes the mental fever just becomes overwhelming, and I have to swear off an author for years to give my mind time to return to equilibrium.
Another place to feel it is in my smile. Which comes out in response to two triggers: (a) really good jokes and funny cleverness (as with Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams)j and (b) an author’s, uh, daringness — pulling off something I didn’t see coming, or pulling off something difficult and pulling it off well.
When I saw Hurt Locker, though — that was a visceral, gut response.
Good point. The type of story may have a lot to do with where it hits you.
Hmm, great question. Brain, stomach, heart? All of the above? I’m not sure, but I love your dad’s drawing!
Maybe the best stories are all of the above. But maybe the reader has to have those places open to feeling.
My throat and my spine.
Nice answer. Unexpected. Which is good.
If I’m lucky to watch a good story, I keep it in my heart and mind. I have watched some and it’s still in my memory; it’s like seeing a part of you in another place and another time. 🙂
I like that way of looking at it–another part of yourself. You are lucky indeed to find a story like that.