Writing Emotion

Writing emotion is not as easy at it sounds. There are, after all, only so many times a writer can describe a point-of-view character’s body language and physiology before it all starts to sound repetitive. There are a limited number of ways a character’s heart can race when confronted with danger, and a limited number of variations on a shrug or caught breath or sigh. Too much gut churning or bile swallowing and the scene reads like an attack of histrionics.

When writers accomplish their first million words of fiction, chances are they have written down every possible combination of body language. They realise that, although each one is useful in its place, not one is guaranteed to convey a sense of emotion on its own.

So how do writers make readers feel the fear or love or anger that their point-of-view characters are going through? Is it all in the character? Or is it also in the plot, dialogue, setting and tone? Is attention to detail merely a way of making the tale appear authentic? Or do details function at some other level, triggering emotional switches in ways that are both subtle and effective?

To explore this question, I set myself a little exercise. I wrote an action scene from scratch, developing it over five different drafts. First I concentrated on plot, and then I incorporated body language/physiology, and then dialogue, setting, details and tone.

Here’s what I ended up with:

Take 1: Starting with Plot:

While taking a photo, Toby lost his footing and stumbled down the escarpment.

Take 2: Incorporating Body Language and physiology:

Toby inched forward and took the photo. He cried out as he lost his footing. He dropped his camera and scrabbled to catch hold of anything that could slow his descent. He yelped as his arms flailed without success. He slammed into a tree trunk. Pain seared through his right thigh. His vision darkened.

Take 3: Incorporating Dialogue:

Toby inched forward and took the photo.

“Watch out,” Krista shouted.

Toby cried out as he lost his footing. He dropped his camera and scrabbled to slow his descent. Stupid, stupid, stupid, he thought. He yelped as his arms flailed without success etc…


Take 4: Incorporating Setting:

The edge was unstable, but the view of the wooded, coastal plain beneath it was worth the risk. Toby inched forward, and took the photo.

“Watch out,” Krista shouted.

The ground slid beneath Toby’s feet. He cried out as he lost his footing and fell an entire body length before landing in gravel. He dropped his camera and scrabbled to slow his descent. Stupid, stupid, stupid, he thought. Branches and twigs blurred out of reach. Stones skidded beneath him, scraping, bruising, accelerating his fall. He saw the tree only seconds before he reached it, an old, twisted Mallee. Yelping, he veered away from it, but his leg hit it full on. Pain seared through his thigh. His vision darkened.


Take 5: Incorporating Details and Tone:

Toby knew the edge was unstable. He inched forward at just the right angle and pressed the shutter release. Old fashioned photography with its film speeds and f-stops may well have taken him weeks to master but, at that moment, he knew he'd gotten everything right. His photo of the coastal plain with its tangled forest would be stunning, not because of some pre-programmed setting, but because of choices he’d made himself. It would win him the prize, maybe even earn him the publication he was aiming for.

“Watch out,” Krista shouted.

The ground slid beneath Toby’s feet. He lost his footing, cried out and fell an entire body length before landing on gravel. Stones skidded beneath him, scraping, bruising, accelerating his slide down the face of the escarpment. He dropped his camera and scrabbled for a handhold. Stupid, stupid, stupid, he thought. Branches and twigs blurred out of reach; except for the Mallee tree that looked old enough and stubborn enough to block a tornado. Yelping, he tried to veer around it, but his leg hit the tree full on. Pain darkened his vision. He caught a final glimpse of his camera, broken in two – film spooling out like ribbon – tumbling down the slope, overtaking him.

Admittedly the fifth piece still needs work, and if it were a real story, I’d let it sit for a few weeks before getting back to it. But it’s just an exercise, so I’m going to stop here, hoping that it shows some of what I’ve learned about incorporating emotion into my stories. Here, I purposely avoided words that *told* emotion, and instead tried to *show* it in the details and in Toby's ambition to get that photo just right. The addition of the symbol of the broken camera mirrored the broken leg (which the reader will learn about in the next scene) and also added an element of disappointment and irony to an already unpleasant situation. Furthermore, I’m hoping that the image of the film unspooling, and destroying the photo, will show the final insult that made Toby’s pain transcend the physical.

But this is just my own attempt at writing emotion. It’s certainly not the best example, and master writers are much better at it. Click here for an excerpt from Jeanette Winterson's novel The Passion where the perfect amount of showing is balanced with the perfect amount of telling to convey the tension and horror of a gambling match ending badly.

If you have any other thoughts on writing emotion, your comments are most welcome.

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Carol