The Big Al
I just keeping Octo
This has always been a problem for me. I was wondering if anyone had pointers on describing emotion.
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Describing emotion
- Thread starter The Big Al
- Start date
Air Dragon
Ha, ha... not.
Hmm... the first thing you've got to remember is that emotions are abstract. Their hard to describe. If i had to describe an emotion, I'd use sensations and reactions the emotion would trigger.
Allow me break that down: when i say sensations, you'd think about how you'd feel when you experience the emotion and connect it to the character. e.g. if it's love you wish to express, think of the warm, fuzzy feeling you got once upon a crush and how your body reacts to it (reaction): stolen glances, flushing, nervousness, sweating, and so on and so forth.
The stretch out the description, link the reaction to the body part in whichever order you feel is best, or makes more sense. eg: When someone moves from denial to anger, they may have been gripping their hair, their eyes dilated with shock. when the switch omes, their eyes will focus into slits of rage. their hands may fall limply to their sides and their hands may ball themselves into fists.
I hope i wasn't too confusing.
L@er!
Allow me break that down: when i say sensations, you'd think about how you'd feel when you experience the emotion and connect it to the character. e.g. if it's love you wish to express, think of the warm, fuzzy feeling you got once upon a crush and how your body reacts to it (reaction): stolen glances, flushing, nervousness, sweating, and so on and so forth.
The stretch out the description, link the reaction to the body part in whichever order you feel is best, or makes more sense. eg: When someone moves from denial to anger, they may have been gripping their hair, their eyes dilated with shock. when the switch omes, their eyes will focus into slits of rage. their hands may fall limply to their sides and their hands may ball themselves into fists.
I hope i wasn't too confusing.
L@er!
Starlight Aurate
Just a fallen star
I have a hard time at emotion too, and I probably suck at writing it more than anyone you could ever meet, though I feel I've been improving and have been doing much of what Air Dragon had mentioned.
Mix action with feeling. Are they so shocked that they could only stand still and stare? Are they pounding their fists in frustration and screaming their fury into the air? Are they curled up into a little ball and shaking as they sob loudly? I often try to mix whatever feelings the character is showing into what they are doing, to help bring it out.
This may feel like a repeat of what the previous poster had said, but I tried to make it different and gave you what advice had helped me. I'm sorry if I didn't help, as I know I typically explain things in confusing ways.
Mix action with feeling. Are they so shocked that they could only stand still and stare? Are they pounding their fists in frustration and screaming their fury into the air? Are they curled up into a little ball and shaking as they sob loudly? I often try to mix whatever feelings the character is showing into what they are doing, to help bring it out.
This may feel like a repeat of what the previous poster had said, but I tried to make it different and gave you what advice had helped me. I'm sorry if I didn't help, as I know I typically explain things in confusing ways.
A good place to start is developing an understanding of how emotion works physically (yes, this might require research). Oftentimes, the best way to communicate emotion is by describing the physical manifestations on it without saying it at all because innately we all know what certain symptoms of certain feelings are, and relating to those symptoms allows the reader to relate.
The second thing to keep in mind is kind of an extension of this. How do emotions cause us to act? Angry people raise their voice, sad people cry, and so on, but it's often more complex than that. Someone who is scared or nervous might become manipulative and try to convince someone else to take on the task that scares them. Someone who is angry might snap, and say things they wouldn't normally. I'm sure your own life experience can produce many more examples; and that's the best place to draw from: your experience. Often, emotional reactions are deep and complex, and that's why they serve as such a great window into the mechanisms of what you're writing. Saying simply that someone cried because they were sad isn't exactly engaging, but showing the ramifications of that sadness in their future behavior is.
It probably is a cliche that goes without saying, but "showing not telling" would be key, and that's more or less how to go about it.
The second thing to keep in mind is kind of an extension of this. How do emotions cause us to act? Angry people raise their voice, sad people cry, and so on, but it's often more complex than that. Someone who is scared or nervous might become manipulative and try to convince someone else to take on the task that scares them. Someone who is angry might snap, and say things they wouldn't normally. I'm sure your own life experience can produce many more examples; and that's the best place to draw from: your experience. Often, emotional reactions are deep and complex, and that's why they serve as such a great window into the mechanisms of what you're writing. Saying simply that someone cried because they were sad isn't exactly engaging, but showing the ramifications of that sadness in their future behavior is.
It probably is a cliche that goes without saying, but "showing not telling" would be key, and that's more or less how to go about it.
nobodys_angel
One more time! ^.^
The only thing I can add to the above comments is just to *watch* people. If you go down to a shopping centre and do some solid people-watching, you notice a myriad of emotions and so many ways of expressing these feelings. When you watch, take note of what their hands do, how their face contorts, etc.
If you've seen the emotion played out in front of you, I find it's easier to write about because you're calling on memory rather than relying entirely on imagination
If you've seen the emotion played out in front of you, I find it's easier to write about because you're calling on memory rather than relying entirely on imagination
LightingKimba
Listenin' t'Dragons!
I'm somewhat used to describing them in terms of their stereotyped nature, I.E. fire shows the intensity of someone's anger, while sadness is usually drawn from a cold wind.
Frankly, it's much easier for me at least to compare an emotion to something, rather than describing what I see. You really need to know how my mind works, however, to truly understand what I mean. ;^^
Frankly, it's much easier for me at least to compare an emotion to something, rather than describing what I see. You really need to know how my mind works, however, to truly understand what I mean. ;^^
KingRaichu
Hail to da king baby
Depends on what perspective you are doing it from. Facial expressions are actually an extremely good sign of emotions. Some authors seem to convey it through the eyes. Personally, i tend to express emotion through different movements, way of talking, and gesticulations in my characters rather than blatantly describing them. But that's only a suggestion. If your doing it from first person, this is easiest. Take any emotion that you've felt, then try to put it into words as accurately as you can. This is difficult, since most people emote rather than actually think "i am angry" obviously, but see if you can conjure an image, a sound, a smell, anything aside from just the feeling and try to write it out.
Phantom Kat
Hobo Writer
Also, to add what other have said, different people react and show their emotions in different ways. While one person's sadness could be bawling their eyes out and falling to their knees, somebody else might cry silently to themselves or hug their nearest friend for support. It all depends on who your character is and how you want them to be portrayed. That's why it's important to truly take the time to flesh out your characters and think about how they would act.
- Kat
- Kat
Dragonfree
Just me
Well, there are two separate problems here. One is describing the emotions of a POV character whose thoughts the reader can actually see; the other is describing the emotions of a character through their actions and expressions and maybe a POV character's personal conclusions about their feelings. These are really quite different.
To describe the emotions of a POV character, I find it pretty effective to describe the thoughts that occur to them as a result of this emotion, especially nonrational thoughts that would generally not occur to this character outside of a burst of emotion ("He was gripped with a powerful urge to strangle that woman"). You can sometimes just name the emotion directly, but that needs to be when the character is specifically conscious of the emotions they're feeling, and is a very ineffective way of invoking sympathy with the character in the reader, so avoid it if that's what you're going for.
For describing emotions without showing directly what the characters are thinking, you have to stick with describing their actions, speech and facial expressions and try to get what they're feeling across that way. Knowing some psychology helps. Facial expressions are obvious, but I prefer the way actions and speech can give emotions away: people in emotional distress speak and act differently than if they were perfectly relaxed. Also be aware that different people have different ways of dealing with their emotions. People who are scared don't just have a scared expression and say they're scared. There are often layers upon layers of coping mechanisms: people express one emotion in the form of another; people project feelings they're feeling onto others to avoid dealing with them themselves; people start excusing what they're feeling as being caused by something other than what it really is. Thought processes change: when you're scared, your thoughts can become jumbled and irrational. Think about how your characters cope with emotions and how they will show this, not always in the most straightforward and obvious ways. This applies to all characters, POV and non-POV; don't think your POV character's emotions are straightforward just because you can write out their thoughts.
Personal experience always helps, if you notice the sorts of things you do or that cross your mind when you're feeling a certain way. To take an example from my own experience, in chapter eight of Morphic, a character is dealing with the loss of his father. I've never lost a parent, or even a grandparent or anyone else especially close to me, but I've noticed that generally when it comes to death, what hits me the hardest, bizarrely, is to think of all the things that the person had planned to do and now never will. So therefore, that character cries for the first time when it occurs to him that his father was in the middle of a book and will never know how it ends, resulting in something that is hopefully a bit more realistic and crushing than just, "X was sad and cried because his father died and that's bad."
To describe the emotions of a POV character, I find it pretty effective to describe the thoughts that occur to them as a result of this emotion, especially nonrational thoughts that would generally not occur to this character outside of a burst of emotion ("He was gripped with a powerful urge to strangle that woman"). You can sometimes just name the emotion directly, but that needs to be when the character is specifically conscious of the emotions they're feeling, and is a very ineffective way of invoking sympathy with the character in the reader, so avoid it if that's what you're going for.
For describing emotions without showing directly what the characters are thinking, you have to stick with describing their actions, speech and facial expressions and try to get what they're feeling across that way. Knowing some psychology helps. Facial expressions are obvious, but I prefer the way actions and speech can give emotions away: people in emotional distress speak and act differently than if they were perfectly relaxed. Also be aware that different people have different ways of dealing with their emotions. People who are scared don't just have a scared expression and say they're scared. There are often layers upon layers of coping mechanisms: people express one emotion in the form of another; people project feelings they're feeling onto others to avoid dealing with them themselves; people start excusing what they're feeling as being caused by something other than what it really is. Thought processes change: when you're scared, your thoughts can become jumbled and irrational. Think about how your characters cope with emotions and how they will show this, not always in the most straightforward and obvious ways. This applies to all characters, POV and non-POV; don't think your POV character's emotions are straightforward just because you can write out their thoughts.
Personal experience always helps, if you notice the sorts of things you do or that cross your mind when you're feeling a certain way. To take an example from my own experience, in chapter eight of Morphic, a character is dealing with the loss of his father. I've never lost a parent, or even a grandparent or anyone else especially close to me, but I've noticed that generally when it comes to death, what hits me the hardest, bizarrely, is to think of all the things that the person had planned to do and now never will. So therefore, that character cries for the first time when it occurs to him that his father was in the middle of a book and will never know how it ends, resulting in something that is hopefully a bit more realistic and crushing than just, "X was sad and cried because his father died and that's bad."
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Pretty much everything has been covered nicely here, but one last thing I would like to add is that you might also want to stop and consider culture as well. Many cultures have slightly different rules as to how emotion should be displayed, and this can affect how people behave externally.
I like to look at emotion in three ways; culture, situation and individual. The culture creates an overarching set of general rules of behaviour, such as for example, a culture where physical confrontation and shouting is frowned upon, so people find other ways to display their anger towards another. The situation is the unique circumstance in which a character is in at the moment of feeling a particular emotion. Using anger as an example again, the ways a person would handle and display the emotion would probably be quite different if they were at a dinner tabe with important people, or if they were in the pub with their best mates. Finally, you look at your character's individual personality. Are they the kind who are quick tempered, or are they extremely tolerant? This will affect how well they handle the emotions they feel as well.
These steps guide external behaviour, but that is different to how the character feels inside, what people don't see. Other people have said, look at what you feel when you are happy, sad or angry and so on. Describe what that feels like to you. If characters are going through situations that you have been in before, think about what you felt then, and how other people (if there were any) around you behaved. Finally, read, read, read. The best way to learn how to employ something in your writing is to learn by example from others.
I like to look at emotion in three ways; culture, situation and individual. The culture creates an overarching set of general rules of behaviour, such as for example, a culture where physical confrontation and shouting is frowned upon, so people find other ways to display their anger towards another. The situation is the unique circumstance in which a character is in at the moment of feeling a particular emotion. Using anger as an example again, the ways a person would handle and display the emotion would probably be quite different if they were at a dinner tabe with important people, or if they were in the pub with their best mates. Finally, you look at your character's individual personality. Are they the kind who are quick tempered, or are they extremely tolerant? This will affect how well they handle the emotions they feel as well.
These steps guide external behaviour, but that is different to how the character feels inside, what people don't see. Other people have said, look at what you feel when you are happy, sad or angry and so on. Describe what that feels like to you. If characters are going through situations that you have been in before, think about what you felt then, and how other people (if there were any) around you behaved. Finally, read, read, read.
The best way to learn how to employ something in your writing is to learn by example from others.
Psychic
Really and truly
That's not so much culture as it is socially acceptable behaviour under specific situations. It's not a bad example, but the general thought process and emotions felt would probably be approximately the same, but at least in the fancy dinner example there would be an aspect of feeling stifled and frustrated about being unable to properly express themselves. Which, of course, is a whole other interesting thing that can be explored.
There isn't a whole lot more I can think to add to what's already been mentioned, especially after Dragonfree. If you're doing a third person point of view from another character, do keep in mind that when describing the emotions being shown by another character, your own character may not be very aware of what the other character is going through. They may not notice some of the physical clues or changes in tone of voice, and may even misinterpret some signs. A character's own emotional reaction to how they see another is reacting is also something to consider, too.
In general, in describing your main character's emotions, some other things you can do include trying to find things they can compare their emotions to - things you character will personally relate to. One character's guilt may feel like a stone dropped in their stomach which is later forgotten, while another may feel like it's a chain wrapped around their body that weighs them down and is only a hassle to them. Otherwise you can mainly look to how one emotion may result in another, such as embarrassment at having been surprised by something (or maybe resulting in anger, depending on the character). Specifically saying "John felt this" isn't going to do much for your readers, but following a thought process, which isn't always clear-cut or rational, is a great way to go.
Also, you can always draw on your own personal experiences, both in feeling those emotions yourself and watching those around you. This is especially interesting when trying to decipher what they're really feeling beyond some of the barriers they may put up to hide their true emotions. You can even look to what actors do in movies in some cases - while a little over exaggerated and not always perfectly accurate, you may be surprised with how much inspiration you can draw from an emotional scene.
~Psychic