In the book Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint: techniques and exercises for crafting dynamic characters and effective viewpoints (phew!!!), Nancy Kress explains that there are two basic situations in which a character’s emotions come into existence. The first one is when a character responds to a situation based on his feelings. For example, a six year old might learn that her dog died and starts crying. In the second situation, the character’s behaviour might be contrary to how she’s feeling. So in our example, the six year old might be sad, but instead of crying, she acts indifferent to the news and goes sledding instead.
As writers, our goal is to make the actions of our characters unique and specific to who they are. Just like in real life, no two people react the same way to a given situation. So how do we do that? According to Nancy, our emotions come from our personal histories (backstories), personality and traits, and motivations (why we want something). That’s why we spend time figuring out who our characters are (characterization) before we start writing the first draft (though some writers figures these things out during that draft). This is achieved through interviews, questionnaires, backstories, etc.
To show our character’s emotions to a given situation, we use actions, dialogue, physical reactions (check out the emotion thesaurus on The Bookshelf Muse), thoughts, and imagery. There’s no standard formula telling you how much of each to add. But like sensory descriptions, the more you use, the richer the emotions will be.
The following is an example from Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler (YA contemporary). Sixteen-year-old Anna is still grieving the death of her first love, Matt, who died a year ago. No one knew the two were secretly involved until now. This is part of the scene where Frankie (Matt’s sister and Anna’s best friend) finds Anna’s journal with her letters to dead Matt. I’ve indicated each of the above elements used throughout to show you how Sarah infused her writing with the different ways of revealing emotion:
I clear my throat and find my voice again, stronger this time. (physical reaction) “Give it back, Frankie. You have no right to read it, and you have no right to rip it apart. Give it to me.” (dialogue)
She looks at me with crazed, lost eyes. (physical reaction) “No, I don’t think so.”
I’m desperate. (telling!) “Frankie, please give it back to me. Please. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but it’s all I have left of—” (dialogue)
“Anna, he was my brother. Mine. You have no right to have anything left of him!” (dialogue) As the declaration leaves her mouth, she turns her back to me and runs to the shoreline, arching her arm behind her, the rarest-red mermaid tear sparkling in her bracelet like the stone I gave back to the ocean only heartbeats ago. (action)
“Frankie, don’t!” I run toward her, but my legs feel weighted, like I’m stuck in a horrible nightmare. (dialogue, action, imagery, thought) I catch her and snag the bottom of her camisole, knocking her down to the sand. (action)
But the journal is no longer attached to her fingers.
It’s sailing through the air overhead, landing flat on the water with an uninspiring plop.
. . . . I keep swimming toward it, but the current is too strong, pulling on my legs and arms and burning my lungs until I can no longer keep my head above it without fighting. (action) As I kick and yank myself back toward shallower water, the tide moves the journal completely out of reach, encircling it, giving me one last look at the warped pages before it pulls them down to the depths of the ocean.
My heart pounds in a thousand shattered-glass pieces, each beating separately, painfully. (physical reaction, imagery)
I’ve lost him all over again. (thought)
When I get out of the water, I sit down hard on the shore, put my head in my hands, and weep until I don’t have any bones. . . . (action, physical reaction, imagery)
. . . . The ocean has swallowed up my journal.
And it takes all the strength I have left not to dive back in and follow it down, down, deep to the bottom of the sea, lost for all eternity like the broken, banished mermaid. (thought, imagery)
Take an emotionally charged scene from your wip, and see how it compares to the above passage. Have you used as many of these elements as you can? Is your scene lacking the richness of emotions seen here? If so, I hope this post helps. I also highly recommend reading Nancy’s book. It obviously goes into more details than I can here.
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I'll be taking Friday off like most of the blogging world (even though I'm Canadian and celebrated Thanksgiving last month). I have some serious writing to catch up on, and one of my kids has Friday off school.
Have a great weekend everyone!