Some emotive words have positive slanting. Writers can use them to give their readers a positive impression of their topic. For example, writing "a cute, fluffy cat" rather than "a small cat with all of its fur" gives a positive emotional impression of the cat by including "cute" and "fluffy" rather than just stating the facts.
Emotive words can also slant a person, animal or event negatively. So, by writing "the mangy, flea-bitten cat" instead of "the small cat with most of its fur," you are casting the cat in a negative light.
All verbs have synonyms, but these synonyms tend to be on different emotive scales. For example, if you were to write "the crowd moved toward the pier," "the crowd ran toward the pier," or "the crowd stampeded toward the pier," you would describe the same event in different ways by changing one verb to its more emotive version.
Nouns often have a number of synonyms. These words do not have to be emotive on their own, but changing a noun for for a synonym can make the sentence more emotive when you do so in context. For example, writing "the bum took some bread" rather than "the homeless man took some bread" makes the sentence more emotively charged against the homeless man in describing him with a negative term. On the other hand, writing "the hungry man took some bread" makes the reader more sympathetic.