The lie from the First Crusader Challenge? I don’t have any brothers: three younger sisters. When I went to college, they got a rabbit. Seriously.
The major pitfall most of us face when writing emotions is falling into the trap of telling. But to engage our readers, simply stating “she was scared” or “he was angry” isn’t going to suffice.
This is just another example of one of those old writing rules: show, don’t tell. But this time, the rule rings true. Take this example from Flogging the Quill:
The scene: Anna is beat from a long, bad day at work and now she’s spent hours at the hospital with her father, who has been unconscious for days. You want to give the reader Anna’s physical and emotional condition. This author wrote:
Anna was physically and mentally exhausted.
Sure, you get information. You have an intellectual understanding of her condition. But you have no feeling for what Anna feels like, do you? To show that Anna is physically and mentally exhausted, you could write this:
All Anna wanted to do was crawl into bed and go to sleep. But first she would cry. She didn’t think she could be calm and composed for another minute.
Here, the example relies on getting deep into the character’s thoughts. Personally, I think we should be on this level with the character a lot of the time. That level of access to the character’s thoughts and feelings draws the reader in.
Another technique is to use action (to use another FtQ example):
Telling: He stabbed the man furiously.
See how an adverb tells rather than shows?
Showing: He plunged the dagger into the man’s chest again and again and again, screaming “Die!” each time the blade stabbed into flesh.
Notice that this example doesn’t name the emotion. Can you tell what it is? Of course! Would using the word “anger” help? Probably not. In fact, it might undercut the power of the scene.
Another option is showing with the cliché, of course, but that’s hardly any better than telling. Clichés, automatic turns of phrase like “his blood boiled,” are used so often they don’t carry much meaning anymore. Even gestures can become cliché. Work harder—change it up and make it fresh instead of giving your readers something to gloss over.
Next time we’ll look at two more ways to show character emotions!
What do you think? How have you used characters’ thoughts or actions to convey their emotions?
Photo by Daniel James
Good post!
I think cliches are just another form of telling.
Still, showing emotions can get difficult around non-demonstrative types.
Trust me to have one in my story.
😉
Well, I was sort of close with your lie, but I got it twisted around a bit 😛
I totally need to do more showing, not telling.
I agree with changing up cliches. Sometimes I’ll put them in my first draft, then go back and make a new phrase to replace it and make it my own.
Oh, yeah, that’s something I want to mention, too—don’t worry about getting it right on the first draft, just put something in there and come back to it!
Great post, as usual!
Awesome post! Showing rather than telling is something I need to work on. Thanks for sharing! And great examples!
This is a great series of posts. I just finished going through a second draft and now I’ll go through my MS again and that’s one of the things I work hard on is making sure the emotion is described correctly/effectively.
I tweeted this because I thought it was valuable. I have such a hard time SHOWING the story rather than TELLING the story. When I do get into show mode, I get into melodramatic show mode and that doesn’t work either. But I guess that’s what second, third, fourth, infinitum drafts are for. Thanks for the post!
Thanks for the series. I need to take several looks at how to develop character emotions, and you’ve given us different angles to consider.
This is a great post. I’ll be making a note in my notebook to refer back when I start revising.
Thanks for the reminder on showing versus telling. Sometimes it’s so tempting to take the easy way out, but you’re right–telling is much more powerful 🙂
Hey Jordan,
Thanks for stopping by the blog last week and commenting. It has been so fun to meet my fellow crusaders! Great post today as well. I was reading it in conjunction with your ‘Why Emotion’ post and I totally sympathized with reading books that don’t capture you as a reader. I often feel that the success behind a book is it’s ability to emotionally engage the reader. It’s interesting that giving emotion to a scene will hook me even when the writing isn’t great. I know for me my biggest problem in this area is getting lazy. It takes longer (and thus expands my word count) to show a scene instead of tell the reader about it. =)
My dad used to say, “I’m as happy as a pig in shit.” I know there’s no vision aids in that statement, yet everyone he said that to laughed. Apparently, the first time I heard him say that, I was six. I went to the barn and sat down in the pig sty. When my mother found me, she said I was snorting and giggling along side the pigs. I had to find out for myself, I guess.
Love your analogies.
Great stuff.
My issue with this approach has been that “showing” is wordier. If he’s angry, why not say, “he was angry?’
But I’ve come to the realization without the detail, the “he was angry” becomes worthless because the reader doesn’t “get” it.
She was angry. She wrote an email and sent it.
vs
She slapped the keys, banging out each word, and with a shout of triumph, pressed “send.”
The reader’s just (usually) going to like the 2nd better, even though it takes longer to read. It means other details may have to be left out.
Really liking this series. 🙂