How To Convey Emotion In Your Fiction

“Show, don’t tell,” teachers always advise aspiring writers. Don’t tell your readers what your characters feel. Show them through action.
But that’s very hard to do, and takes practice. It’s so much easier to tell how characters feel, as in this scene:
Brian is fed up, furious, boiling mad. It’s the third time she’s been late since New Year’s, only two weeks ago. So much for resolutions. He’s hurt and angry. And jealous of whatever is taking up her time–or whoever. If she’s so happy to see him, why’s she late again? When she finally shows up, half an hour late, he’s so agitated that he can’t talk right.
Let’s rework that and make a point without telling your reader what to think. Put yourself in Brian’s place. She, whoever she is, is late again:
Brian throws his newspaper and jacket on his chair at Starbucks and stands in line for another cup of coffee, even though the caffeine already in his bloodstream is making him sweat and giving him palpitations. It’s the third time she’s been late since New Year’s, only two weeks ago. So much for resolutions. He looks out the window and sees a woman with a gray raincoat just like hers, but her hair is blond, not brown, and she’s–
“Short, tall, grande, or venti?” the counter man interrupts.
Brian turns away from the window. “I don’t know, small.” Those pompous names for sizes of coffee cups are so irritating.
He carries the steaming cup back to his table and sits down. There she is, on the corner diagonally opposite. His heart bangs against his ribs and he gulps air like a swimmer coming up from a deep dive. She’s half an hour late and not even walking fast. He’s going to ignore her. He opens his newspaper and nonchalantly sips his coffee, refusing to look at the door, but he hears the swish of a shopping bag against her raincoat and smells her Chanel Chance perfume.
“Hello, darling,” she says and wraps her arms around him.
He kisses her and rubs his face into her damp, fragrant hair. Her slender body in his arms feels like a cool drink after a long run on a hot day. “Hello, love,” he says. “I missed you.”
The second scene is longer than the first, but that’s not the only difference. The fist scene sums up what happens, while the second scene puts you in Brian’s head and lets you feel what he feels. Here are some ways to achieve that:
Set the scene. Put your character in a place that you can describe; in our example, a coffee shop.
Have the character do something that reveals his state of mind. Brian, agitated, is drinking too much coffee and staring out the window for his missing girlfriend. He’s irritable about inconsequential things, like silly names for sizes of coffee cups.
Describe physical symptoms of this state of mind–the heart thumping, fast breathing.
Show your character pretending to have one emotion while really feeling another. Brian pretends not to care that she’s late, but he’s completely obsessed with her. This technique gives your reader the sense of sharing a secret.
Include vivid details–the scent of perfume, the sound of a coat swishing.
Have your character do the opposite of what he says he’s going to do. He’s going to ignore her, right? That will punish her for being late, right? Instead, he craves her company “like a cool drink after a long run on a hot day.” Now your reader can start to wonder where this relationship is going, and who’s in control.
Try this exercise yourself. Summarize a scene, as in our first example. Then bring it to life, as in our second. To get you started, here are two more situations involving our hapless Brian:
Situation 1: Brian buys an expensive, personalized gift for his girlfriend. She opens it and doesn’t react as he’s hoping she will.
Situation 2: Brian breaks a date at the last moment. On a whim, he gets on a bus going out of town, with only his briefcase and no destination. Then he gets a phone call that makes him turn around at the next bus stop.
As you practice with these and other examples, get inside your character’s mind and write what he would do and say. Make him as real as he can be, and your readers will hang on his every thought and deed.
What happens when an ordinary person becomes extraordinary?
Tobias starts out in life much the same as any of us–not rich, not poor, with imperfect parents and unlimited ambition. When he’s twenty years old, his future is altered in irreparable ways after a tragic car accident pushes him down a new path. The once-promising anthropology major is forced to abandon his dreams in order to care for his orphaned, brain-damaged younger brother.
In his late thirties, Tobias works in a bookstore, trying desperately to make ends meet to support his family. His daily grind only reinforces the sadness that broken dreams and bad luck bring in their wake.
How many times have you heard someone say, “If only I won the lottery?”
When Tobias finds he has won the Mega Millions lottery, his unimaginable bad luck seems to have changed into unimaginable good luck… or has it?
Over peaks and valleys, this uplifting journey will challenge the limits of luck, life, and what we value most.
Find out more about the complications of Tobias’s friendship and rivalry with his best friend, Martin; the effects of all this bad luck and good luck on his marriage; and the struggles of his brother, Simeon, once a talented cartoonist, in… You Never Know.