Three Don"ts for Writing Character Emotions
Our goal as fiction writers is to make our readers feel our character's emotions and convince our readers that those emotions are real.
Yet, despite our best efforts, we all too often sabotage the emotional reality of our stories by using cliches, not trusting our own experiences, and using vague, unfocused ideas to describe our character's emotions.
A cliche is an overused and trite expression.
For example, "green with envy" and "having sweaty palms" are emotional cliches.
We litter our fiction with cliches when we grow lazy or tired with our writing, or simply use the first emotional description that pops into our head.
To avoid writing emotional cliches, don't use the first that first expression you think of.
In fact, don't use the second or third, either.
When you feel yourself settling for an emotional cliche, stop and think about it.
Strive for originality.
For example, instead of writing, "his face was as read as a beet," write, "his face looked like a boiled ham.
" We want to write convincingly, but we often lack confidence in our abilities and our own experiences.
We've all experienced the same emotions as everyone else; so why can't we trust ourselves to write about them convincingly? Fear, mostly, which, ironically, is an emotion.
Our character faces a life-and-death decision.
Yet, we've never faced that kind of decision before, so we don't trust how we would feel in that same kind of situation.
But we have all faced difficult choices in our lives and we know the fear and uncertainty that accompanies those choices.
Explore those emotions, remember how they felt, smelled, and tasted.
How did you mind and body react? Write those down and then use them in your fiction.
Sometimes, though, it isn't a simple matter of trusting our own experiences, but uncertainty about how our character should act at a specific point in our story.
We're unsure of how they should react to a specific situation or experience.
So instead of using specific, concrete details, we bombard our reader with a laundry list of emotional jargon and cliches, hoping that they'll be able to see through the fog and understand what we're trying to convey.
In these cases, get specific.
Use concrete details.
Dig into your character's mind and use the color of her past experiences to convincingly describe how she feels in that moment.
Convincing our readers to feel what our characters feel and to believe that those emotions are real takes work.
Too often, though, our fiction falls flat because we write with emotional cliches, fail to trust our own experiences, and use vague descriptions when writing about our character's emotions.
When you find yourself falling into any of these traps, dig for originality, learn to trust your own experiences, and used specific, concrete details to write compelling and believable character emotions.
Yet, despite our best efforts, we all too often sabotage the emotional reality of our stories by using cliches, not trusting our own experiences, and using vague, unfocused ideas to describe our character's emotions.
A cliche is an overused and trite expression.
For example, "green with envy" and "having sweaty palms" are emotional cliches.
We litter our fiction with cliches when we grow lazy or tired with our writing, or simply use the first emotional description that pops into our head.
To avoid writing emotional cliches, don't use the first that first expression you think of.
In fact, don't use the second or third, either.
When you feel yourself settling for an emotional cliche, stop and think about it.
Strive for originality.
For example, instead of writing, "his face was as read as a beet," write, "his face looked like a boiled ham.
" We want to write convincingly, but we often lack confidence in our abilities and our own experiences.
We've all experienced the same emotions as everyone else; so why can't we trust ourselves to write about them convincingly? Fear, mostly, which, ironically, is an emotion.
Our character faces a life-and-death decision.
Yet, we've never faced that kind of decision before, so we don't trust how we would feel in that same kind of situation.
But we have all faced difficult choices in our lives and we know the fear and uncertainty that accompanies those choices.
Explore those emotions, remember how they felt, smelled, and tasted.
How did you mind and body react? Write those down and then use them in your fiction.
Sometimes, though, it isn't a simple matter of trusting our own experiences, but uncertainty about how our character should act at a specific point in our story.
We're unsure of how they should react to a specific situation or experience.
So instead of using specific, concrete details, we bombard our reader with a laundry list of emotional jargon and cliches, hoping that they'll be able to see through the fog and understand what we're trying to convey.
In these cases, get specific.
Use concrete details.
Dig into your character's mind and use the color of her past experiences to convincingly describe how she feels in that moment.
Convincing our readers to feel what our characters feel and to believe that those emotions are real takes work.
Too often, though, our fiction falls flat because we write with emotional cliches, fail to trust our own experiences, and use vague descriptions when writing about our character's emotions.
When you find yourself falling into any of these traps, dig for originality, learn to trust your own experiences, and used specific, concrete details to write compelling and believable character emotions.
