How to Describe Emotion
As writers, we want our readers to connect emotionally to our characters and to feel their pains and struggles—but it can be tricky to know how to describe emotion to create that connection. Announcing, “He is sad!” or “She feels cheerful” is almost worse than leaving the reader guessing. It’s just a bald fact. It doesn’t invite the reader in, creating an emotional bond and letting the reader experience feelings along with the character. Here are some more effective ways to describe emotion.
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How to Describe Emotion THROUGH ACTIONS
One tool is to describe emotion through a character’s actions. For instance, the fourth grader who is walking home slowly, dragging his backpack, tennis shoes scuffing the sidewalk, eyes focused on the ground in front of him—is he pleased or bummed about the day he just had? We can make a pretty good guess.
Sometimes we choose to use physical actions in an effort to show, not tell, feelings. And that’s a great start. Maybe this fourth grader sees someone across the street and runs over to shove them, or hides behind a big tree. Yes, those actions both give us clues about how he’s feeling, but they can also be misinterpreted if we only get the physical actions without anything else.
Those are physical actions, but what about physical reactions that are specifically trying to describe a character’s emotions? When we use physical reactions to describe emotion, it can be so, so difficult not to fall into the trap of clichés. Hearts pounding, butterflies in the stomach, the brooding gaze, the grin stretched from ear to ear, the stomach dropping, a heart leaping into a throat or skipping a beat, eyes twinkling—these have all been used so often that they can make our writing feel a bit stale. Sometimes writers try to solve the difficulty of clichés by changing them just a bit. But altering them slightly, with a stomach clenching instead of dropping, isn’t usually much better.
Trying to describe emotion only through physical actions and reactions is too surface-level. Our fourth grader’s body language is giving us some clues, but we don’t actually know what, specifically, he’s feeling. Is it despair, embarrassment, fatigue, defeat, dread, humiliation—what?
HOW TO DESCRIBE EMOTION THROUGH DIALOGUE
Using dialogue as a way to show emotion can work well. Say our downcast fourth grader sprayed himself at the water fountain, and everyone laughed at him. He could say to his brother, “Don’t even ask about the water fountain,” “I’m quitting school,” “Please don’t tell Mom,” “I’m gonna get back at him,” or “Did you know that water fountain shoots up three feet in the air?” Dialogue can offer a lot of insight into how a character is processing their situation.
THROUGH INTERIORITY
But the gold standard for creating an emotional connection between the reader and the character is interiority. Interiority is a character’s internal thoughts, feelings, reactions, hopes, and struggles. As novelists, one of our huge advantages over movies or TV shows is that we can jump into our characters’ heads to describe their emotions any time we like. We aren’t limited to close-ups of meaningful gazes and misty eyes while wondering what’s going on inside. We can actually experience emotions, feelings, and thoughts along with our characters.
Using a deep point of view offers us access to interiority in our characters. Filtering their physical actions and speech through our knowledge of that character’s inner workings makes all of it more meaningful and builds a strong emotional connection between the reader and the character. For example, our feet-dragging fourth grader says to his brother, “Please don’t tell Mom.” Then he thinks to himself, She’ll cry if she hears about everyone laughing at me. I can’t let her know. Not after everything that happened at our old school. I’ll have to pretend everything is fine. Got to get this out of my system before I get home.
On the other hand, maybe he says, “Please don’t tell Mom,” and thinks, She’ll ground me for a year. I’m always in trouble, even though it’s not my fault. He started it. Why am I the one who always gets caught? His thoughts put a whole different interpretation on those same slumped shoulders and line of dialogue. That’s why we can’t rely on physical markers and dialogue alone to describe emotion. You can read more about interiority here.
The combination of physical clues, dialogue, and rich interiority is the key to how to describe emotion and create that strong emotional connection between a reader and a character. Now, I’ll close my laptop, unwrap a chocolate, and say, “Finally!” That’s a relief. It was harder than I thought to explain how to describe emotion.
Happy writing!
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