How to Show Emotions
One of the best ways for readers to connect with your story is to empathize with your characters.
Emotions color the lives of our characters, their thoughts and actions. Consequently, it’s not only important to understand what our characters are feeling, but we need to understand why. If a character is angry, the writer must understand what’s fueling that ire. Are they disgusted? Irritated? Jealous? Is that Irritation caused by an annoyance, or a more serious aggravation?
Click on the one of the images below to see more specific names of emotions.
Show, Don't Tell your characters' feelings
Regardless of how specific you understand your characters’ feelings, it’s important to show them. If you were to simply name a feeling like:
Susan felt elated.
you would be telling us how she felt, not showing us. Telling explains to the reader what she’s feeling instead of allowing the reader to come to their own conclusion. In TV shows and movies, the characters don’t go around announcing “I’m happy.” Instead, we observe them smiling, we see them walking with a bounce in their step, we notice their cheerful tone of voice, and we come to the conclusion that they’re happy. The same strategy can be applied to writing.
However, it’s challenging to show emotions in the medium of words alone. Feelings are abstract; they aren’t concrete objects that we can directly see or perceive with our senses. Instead, we have to describe emotions in terms of observable actions or outcomes.
Strategies to Show Feelings
When characters experience a significant event, there may be an entire sequence of reactions. Although not all of these reactions may be experienced, they always occur in a specific order.
- Instinctual Reactions (both physical: flinching, wincing, ducking, and internal: heartbeat, nervousness)
- Emotions
- Thoughts
- Speech/Action
Instinctual Reactions
Often times, the internal sensation is a character’s first reaction to an event, before characters think or consciously act on them.
Of course, your character’s inner sensations are private; other characters won’t be able to observe them.
Examples of Instinctual Reactions
Darla’s heartbeat hammered against her ribs, a deafening drumbeat drowning out the world. Each thud echoed in her ears, a frantic metronome counting down to something terrible. Every rustle of leaves, every chirp of a bird, amplified a thousand times, assaulting her senses. He was here. Somewhere.
Darla’s inner sensation is a reaction to her panic. Note the last two sentences add in her thoughts. Imagine moving those thoughts to the beginning of the paragraph. It doesn’t sound right. Reactions must come in the order specified above.
Thoughts
The reader has access to your POV character’s thoughts, which allows them a unique inner perspective to how your character is processing their experiences.
Of course, your character’s thoughts are private; other characters won’t be able to observe them.
Examples of Thoughts
Charles meticulously ran through his mental checklists, ensuring every detail was flawless, yet a persistent doubt gnawed at him that something might go wrong at the last moment. His focus wavered, and he found himself lost in thoughts of what could happen, both good and bad.
Charles is anticipating an important and imminent event.
Speech and Tone of Voice
A character who’s enraged sounds very different from one who is tranquil. While their emotional state may reveal itself through their words, the energy of their emotional state is clear in their tone of voice. As with physical expressions, characters are not always aware of their own tone of voice.
Examples of Speech and Tone of Voice
Bernadette sucked in a quick breath. Her lips remained parted but she couldn’t get her words out. “Look at that,” she said eventually said, covering her mouth. “I can’t believe it. Look at it.”
I hope you feel that the above description is more captivating than simply saying “Bernadette was astonished.”
Physical Action
Emotions can be expressed through physical action, body language, and facial expression. Characters won’t be aware of all of their own body language and facial expressions. For example, the character expressing an emotion won’t be able to observe their own facial expressions.
Examples of Physical Expression
Alex crossed his arms and rubbed his neck as he finished pacing across the room. He finally sat down, tapping his fingers loudly on the table. These are all physical manifestations of irritation or annoyance or frustration.
Final Tips
When showing an emotion, it’s important not to overdo it; a couple of hints will usually suffice.
Emotional expression (and reaction) is something you can use to make your characters unique. For example, one character might always sigh loudly or swear when angry, while another character might cross her arms and become quiet, seething on the inside.
A great resource for exploring physical, verbal, and internal reaction to emotions is the book The Emotion Thesaurus by Becca Puglisi and Angela Ackerman.