Or maybe a more answerable questions would be: what was the last thing you read that make you cry?

I should not tell you this. But...
Clint Eastwood films, Dirty Harry, etc., used to make me cry.
A hero crushing the bad guys. thoroughly. That does it to me. every. time. I may be alone in this though.

The sales figures for the Twilight books.

Bad things happening to characters, including animal characters, with whom I am fully engaged. I am not thinking of shocking or gruesome events, but poignant ones. For example, the death of the mother in One True Thing ripped me up.

The last thing I read that made me cry was GivesMeHope. That's probably not the kind of writing you're talking about, but I can't think of anything else. I do cry when watching some chick movies - I think the last one was The Proposal (awful, I know). I usually avoid chick lit though.

Kids dying. Never affected me before I had one of my own.

Put in a dying animal (I'm looking at you "Where the Red Fern Grows"!) and I'm bawling my eyes out.

Before Beth dies in Little Women, her sister Jo takes her for a trip to the seashore. When they return home, the decline in Beth's health is suddenly apparent to her parents in a way that it hadn't been before because they were seeing it daily.

She was right: there was no need of any words when they got home, for mother and father saw plainly, now, what they had prayed to be saved from seeing. Tired with her short journey, Beth went at once to bed, saying how glad she was to be at home; and when Jo went down, she found that she would be spared the hard task of telling Beth's secret. Her father stood leaning his head on the mantelpiece and did not turn as she came in; but her mother stretched out her arms as if for help and Jo went to comfort her without a word.

Death, yeah. The first book that made me cry was Animal Farm, when Boxer dies.

I may cross post this q to askme... hmmm.

It's a little hard to answer without knowing what you're working on. But whether it's a nonfiction piece or a poem, short story, or novel, it's best, as a writer, to go for honest emotion. If nonfiction, tell the story as truthfully and faithfully as you can. If fiction, let yourself embody your characters and the situation and, as a result, the emotion, for you and the reader, will follow from there. It's best not to try to manipulate the reader; readers have a keen sense for anything false or forced or insincere. It will also be a richer experience this way for you as the writer, I think. And don't forget the details. Always look for where you can expand your details and descriptions of people, places, events. Notice how in the Little Women excerpt above, the emotions of shock and sadness, grief and devastation are never explicitly mentioned; the emotion is conveyed through the details, the father's simple gesture of his head on the mantelpiece. With this gesture, and with all that's come before in the novel, the writer and the reader feel along with this father, and the depth of his unspoken grief and realization is all the more poignant.

I guess there's no "formula" really. It's much more subtle than that, I think. The same basic scene depicting a death, for instance, might be effective (authentic, detailed, subtle, sincere) written one way and ineffective written another (vague, false, manipulative, over-the-top).

Good luck with your endeavor, in any case. I also always like to recommend Natalie Goldberg's books, especially Wild Mind, to any fellow writers; I consider it my bible.

Or perhaps you're working on an AT & T commercial and all is for naught. :) (Though I suppose the basics still apply.)

Thanks everyone!

And thanks Pips! This is excellent advice for any kind of writing - advice I wouldn't have thought of in quite that way.

In general, I think intentionally setting out to make a reader cry is a pretty dumb goal. But I'm writing a school application essay and I think a little emotional manipulation may be warranted! Not that I actually think my application is likely to make the committee cry, but more I want to give it emotional heft and then that also got me thinking about what makes me cry, and why, and whether there are specific qualities that writing can include to this ends.

So thanks!

Oh, and on the subject of AT&T ads, I just remembered the last thing that made me cry like this: A stupid McDonald's ad. It was on Univision during the world cup - this whole village getting together, piling their TVs on top of each other in the village square to watch the game together. I cried and then got mad that I was crying the first few times I watched it!

Yeah, certain ads can definitely have this albeit unwanted effect on me as well.

A word of unsolicited advice on application essays: keep them very straight-forward. Don't get too personal (even if they ask you to) and definitely don't try to make anybody cry. Trust me. I teach high school students in the Bronx and have coached many of them through the college application process, including into schools like NYU, Stanford, Fordham, and Syracuse, with full scholarships, and many of them have very difficult family and/or personal histories (as do I), including homelessness, foster care, and pregnancy. Try to emphasize your achievements (academic and extracurricular) and include any (forgive me) "tear worthy" personal history in a brief and matter-of-fact way in a separate, middle paragraph. True or not, you want to give the impression that yes, this has been a challenge in your life, but that you have overcome it. Some things, like psychological problems/treatment and violence in the family, you don't want to include at all (it's none of their business, and not knowing you, they might make unfavorable or prejudicial assumptions, whether they mean to or not). Be yourself, be straight-forward, but not too revealing. And good luck!

(If it's any consolation, at most schools, they don't read application essays. Many schools are eliminating them altogether. Graduate schools might read them, since they get fewer stacks of applications. Same guidelines apply, though. Again, good luck! Applications can be a time-sucking misery, but they can be worth it in the end!)