Let's start with a sentence that has probably appeared in almost
every writers draft at some point.
She was devastated. There it is.
Clean, direct, technically useful, and very often not quite
enough. Now, the problem with she was
devastated isn't that it's wrong.
It might be absolutely accurate. Your character may in fact be
devastated. She may be standing in the
kitchen holding the letter, the teacup, the phone, the divorce
papers, the funeral program, the small ceramic badger her
grandmother left her in the will.
Whatever misery based object we've handed her, she may be
thoroughly devastated by it. But accuracy is not the same as
emotional power. When we write she was
devastated. We've given the reader the
conclusion. We've told them what the
emotional verdict is, but we may not yet have given them the
experience. And that's the difference we're
talking about today. Because very often, when
emotional writing feels flat, overwrought, or oddly distant,
it's not because the writer doesn't understand what the
character is feeling. It's because the writer
understands it so well that they've skipped straight to
explaining it. The writer knows the character
is heartbroken, furious, ashamed, lonely, relieved,
terrified, overwhelmed. So they put that on the page.
And then they put it on the page again.
And then, just in case the reader has wandered in from
another room halfway through the scene and missed all the
emotional furniture, they explain it one more time and
listen. I say that with enormous
affection, because this is a deeply normal drafting habit.
When we care about a scene, we want the reader to care too.
When we know a moment matters, we don't want the reader to miss
it. So we underline it.
Then we underline the underlining.
Then we add a small neon sign that says important feeling
here. But emotional impact doesn't
usually come from naming the feeling over and over.
It comes from giving the reader enough specific evidence that
they begin to feel it for themselves.
So in this episode, we're going to talk about how to write
emotion without explaining everything.
Not how to ban emotional words from your writing.
Not how to remove every sentence that says he was angry or she
felt lonely, or they were afraid.
That's not the aim. I'm not here to whack your
manuscript with a wooden ruler every time the word sad appears.
For one thing, I don't have the upper body strength.
For another, it would be bad advice.
Sometimes naming an emotion directly is exactly the right
choice. Sometimes a short, simple
emotional statement gives a beat clarity.
Sometimes it creates rhythm. Sometimes it lands with real
force precisely because the writing has been restrained up
to that point. But there's a difference between
using emotional naming deliberately and relying on it
because the scene itself hasn't yet created enough emotional
evidence. That's what we're going to
explore. By the end of this episode.
You'll understand the difference between explained emotion and
experienced emotion. You'll know why emotional
explanation can flatten a scene. You'll have a set of practical
tools for creating emotion through behaviour, body
language, thought patterns, sensory detail, dialogue,
avoidance, contradiction, setting, objects, silence,
action and subtext. And we'll look at before and
after examples because nothing says craft podcast like lovingly
taking a sentence apart and putting it back together with
slightly better lighting. The big idea is this.
Your job is not to hide emotion from the reader.
Your job is to make emotion happen inside the reader.
That's the work. Let's define our terms.
Explained emotion is when the prose gives the reader the
emotional conclusion. She was sad, he was furious, she
realised she was lonely. He felt ashamed of what he'd
done. They were overwhelmed with
grief. These lines tell us what the
character is feeling, and again, there's nothing inherently
wicked about them. They can be useful.
They can Orient the reader. They can keep the prose moving.
The trouble begins when the scene relies on these labels
without giving the reader much else.
If the only evidence I have that a character is furious is the
sentence he was furious, then I understand the information
intellectually, but I may not feel much.
It's a bit like reading a weather report that says there
was a terrible storm. Fine, I believe you.
But I'm not wet. I'm not hearing the windows
rattle. I'm not watching the garden
furniture make a desperate bid for freedom down the road.
Experienced emotion works differently.
Experienced emotion is created when the reader receives enough
specific evidence to infer what's happening emotionally.
That evidence might come from what the character does.
It might come from what they notice.
It might come from what they refuse to notice.
It might come from the words they can't say or the words they
say. Instead, it might come from the
object they keep touching, the person they avoid looking at,
the laugh that comes out too brightly, the silence after a
question, the way their thoughts begin to fragment, repeat, or
circle. Experienced emotion gives the
reader something to participate in.
Instead of saying she was lonely, the scene might show her
setting out two mugs before remembering there is no one else
in the house. Instead of saying he was
ashamed, the scene might show him straightening the already
straight picture frame because he can't meet his daughter's
eyes. Instead of saying she wanted
him, the scene might show her remembering every ordinary thing
about him except the one thing she's trying not to remember,
the warmth of his hand at the small of her back.
The reader puts the pieces together, and because the reader
has done some of the emotional work, the feeling belongs to
them too. That's why the take away for
this episode is give the reader evidence, not just the verdict.
So why does emotional explanation sometimes flatten
the scene? There are a few reasons.
First, it can give the reader the answer too early.
If you tell me in the first line of a beat that a character is
devastated, you may have removed the pleasure and pressure of
discovering that devastation through the scene.
It's a little like someone leaning over during a murder
mystery and whispering it's the vicar.
Even if the vicar is indeed up to something, part of the
pleasure is getting there. Emotion works in a similar way.
Readers often want to sense the feeling before it's named.
They want to feel it. Gathering.
Second emotional explanation can repeat what the scene is already
proving. If a character slams the door,
deletes the message, throws the flowers in the bin, and tells
her ex, you can keep the cat, but don't you dare pretend you
know what I gave up for you. We probably don't need the next
sentence to say she was angry. We know the line doesn't deepen
the moment, it just labels it. Third explanation can reduce
complex emotion to a single word.
Most strong emotional moments are not one clean feeling.
A character might be angry and embarrassed and relieved and
still in love. A character might be grieving
someone they also resented. A character might be ashamed of
wanting something they also believes they deserve.
When we reach too quickly for one label, we may flatten all
that complication. 4th over explanation can make the
narrator sound as if they're standing outside the scene,
interpreting it for us. Instead of feeling embedded in
the characters immediate experience, we feel as though
someone has paused the action to explain what everything means.
This is especially important in close third person or first
person, where we often want the emotional experience to feel
immediate, partial, messy, and alive.
And finally, too much emotional explanation can prevent the
reader from participating. Readers are not empty buckets
waiting to be filled with feeling.
Readers are active, they infer, they connect, they notice
patterns. They enjoy putting two and two
together, especially when the writer trusts them to get to 4
without installing floodlights around the equation.
When we explain too much, we don't just clarify.
Sometimes we rob the reader of discovery, and discovery is one
of the places where emotion lives.
Let's be kind about this, because over explaining emotion
is not a sign that you're a bad writer.
It is usually a sign that you're drafting.
Early drafts are where we often explain the scene to ourselves
before we know how to dramatise it for the reader.
You might write she felt abandoned, because that's the
truth you've discovered. Good.
Keep it for now. That sentence may be doing
useful work for you as the writer.
It's a signpost. It tells you what the scene
wants to create. Then, in revision, you can ask,
right, How would abandonment actually show up here?
Would she keep checking her phone?
Would she make too much food? Would she tell everyone she
prefers being on her own? Would she suddenly become
furious about something tiny because the bigger hurt is too
dangerous to touch? This is where the scene starts
to come alive. Writers often over explain
emotion because they're afraid the reader will miss the point.
That fear is understandable. You've spent months, maybe
years, with these characters. You know the history, you know
the wound. You know that when he refuses
the cup of tea, it's not about tea.
It's about the entire collapsed architecture of his childhood.
The reader does not know that yet, so the instinct is to help,
possibly too much. Writers also over explain
because they don't yet trust the reader's ability to infer.
But readers are very good at inference when we give them the
right evidence. They don't need everything
interpreted. They need enough to go on.
Another reason is that the scene pressure may be underdeveloped.
If the character is just sitting around feeling sad, the prose
may start explaining sadness because nothing is forcing the
feeling into action. But if the character has to pack
up their dead father's house before the estate agent arrives
at 4, grief has somewhere to go. It can move through objects,
choices, arguments, delays, avoidance, physical labour,
small discoveries. Emotion gets stronger when it
has to act under pressure. Writers may also over explain
because they know the character's emotional state, but
not the character's active desire in the scene.
Emotion is not a substitute for scene purpose.
A character can be devastated, yes, but what do they want in
this moment? Do they want to get through
dinner without crying? Do they want their sister to
apologise? Do they want to hide the letter?
Do they want to be touched while also being terrified of being
touched? Once we know what the character
wants, emotion can push against desire, and often writers over
explain because they haven't yet discovered what the character
is. Avoiding, denying, hiding or
trying not to feel. Characters are rarely
emotionally tidy, thank goodness.
Otherwise fiction would be a very short and well organised
pamphlet. People often reveal emotion by
resisting it. They joke when they're
frightened, they tidy when they're grieving.
They criticize when they're ashamed.
They talk about the weather when they want to say please don't
leave. That resistance is gold.
Because when a character tries not to feel something, the
reader often feels it more. So let's get practical.
If we're not relying only on emotional labels, what do we use
instead? We use evidence.
Not random decoration. Not a tray of gestures tipped
into the scene like craft confetti.
Specific evidence. Evidence that comes from the
character, the situation, the relationship, and the pressure
of the moment. Behaviour is one of the
strongest ways to create emotion because it shows feeling in
motion. What does the character do not?
What do they feel in the abstract, but what action does
that feeling produce? A grieving character might wash
the same plate three times. An angry character might become
suddenly terrifyingly polite. A lonely character might leave
the radio on in every room. A frightened character might
check the lock, walk away, then return to check it again.
The key is specificity. Generic gestures tend to feel
thin. Clenched fists, racing hearts,
tears pricking the eyes, a lump in the throat.
These things happen in real life.
Of course. Cliches are often cliches
because they contain some truth. The trouble is that they've been
used so often they can become invisible.
So instead of reaching for the first physical gesture that
comes to mind, ask what would this particular character do in
this particular situation? A restrained character may not
throw the glass. He may set it down very
carefully. A people pleaser may not shout.
She may offer to make coffee while mentally composing 17
different versions of the argument she'll never have.
A proud character may not cry at the funeral.
He may refuse help carrying the flowers even though his hands
are shaking. Behaviour turns emotion into
evidence. Body language and physical
response can be powerful, but this is where many writers
accidentally create what I call the anatomy parade.
The heart pounds, the stomach drops, the palm sweat, the
throat tightens, the knees weaken.
Before long, the poor character sounds less like they're having
an emotion and more like they're being assembled from spare
parts. Physical response works best
when it is specific, contextual, and sometimes contradictory.
Fear doesn't always make someone tremble.
Sometimes fear makes them very still.
Anger doesn't always make someone loud.
Sometimes anger makes them quiet enough to frighten everyone in
the room. Desire doesn't always make
someone move closer. Sometimes it makes them step
back, think about the body as a place where the character's
public self and private feeling collide.
Maybe she smiles so hard her jaw aches.
Maybe he keeps his hands in his pockets because he doesn't trust
them. Maybe she sits on the edge of
the chair, as if the room hasn't given her permission to stay.
The body can tell the truth the character is trying to manage.
Emotion changes the shape of thought.
This is especially useful in close third person and first
person. Fear often fragments thought.
It jumps ahead. It narrows possibilities.
It becomes repetitive. Not the alley, not now, not
again. Grief may circle.
It may return to the same ordinary detail because the mind
cannot take in the whole loss. His shoes were still by the
door. Brown laces, one frayed end.
She had meant to replace them. Shame may deflect.
It may look for excuses, technicalities, someone else to
blame, anything to avoid the centre of the wound.
Anger may sharpen. It may become precise and
prosecutorial. It notices flaws.
It builds a case. Loneliness may drift.
It may linger too long on other people's noise, light, warmth,
routines. When you're revising an
emotional scene, don't just ask what the character thinks, Ask
how the emotion changes the pattern of thinking.
Are the sentences shorter? Do they repeat?
Do they become more analytical? Do they avoid the obvious thing?
Do they fixate on one detail? The mind has body language too.
Emotion changes what a character notices.
This is one of the most useful tools in the box.
A lonely character might notice the second chair at the cafe
table, the couple arguing softly over the bill, the neighbor
laughing through the wall, the untouched side of the bed.
A grieving character might fixate on ordinary objects that
suddenly feel unbearable. A toothbrush, a shopping list, a
receipt for milk, the dent in a pillow.
The trick is not to describe everything.
The trick is to choose the detail the emotion would select.
If a character has just been rejected, they may not notice
the beautiful sunset. Or they might notice it and hate
it for carrying on. If a character is anxious, they
may become hypersensitive to sound.
The lift cables, the phone buzz, the scrape of someone's chair,
the pause before an answer. Sensory detail is not there to
decorate the scene. It shows us how the characters
emotional state is organising the world.
Emotion often appears most powerfully in dialogue when
characters do not say the emotional truth directly.
Real people are famously inconvenient in this regard.
They rarely walk into a room and say I'm currently experiencing
abandonment pain due to unresolved childhood wounds and
your late arrival has activated my deepest fear, which is a
shame really, it would save everyone a lot of time.
Instead they say you said 7 or don't worry, I ate already or I
didn't realise you were still coming.
The surface line is practical. The emotional truth sits
underneath. Let's say a character wants to
say I missed you. They might say there's soup in
the fridge. Let's say they want to say
please don't go. They might say you'll need an
umbrella. Let's say they want to say you
hurt me. They might say I'm glad you
found someone who makes you happy.
Dialogue becomes emotionally rich when the reader can sense
the gap between what is said and what is meant.
Characters often reveal emotion by trying not to reveal it.
A character who says I'm fine while alphabetizing the spice
rack at midnight may be more emotionally compelling than a
character who announces I am broken beyond repair.
Avoidance creates tension because the reader can feel the
pressure underneath the performance.
Contradiction is especially useful.
A character says they don't care, then keeps asking
questions. A character says they're not
frightened, then chooses the chair with it's back to the
wall. A character says they've moved
on, then recognises the sound of someone's footsteps after 10
years. Contradiction makes emotion feel
human. It also helps you avoid writing
emotional states. As one note, most of us are
walking contradictions on legs. Fiction should take advantage of
that. Settings and objects can hold
emotional charge. A room can become unbearable
because of who is missing from it.
A coat can carry the shape of a body.
An unopened letter can become louder than any argument.
A chipped mug can hold a whole marriage.
But the object has to be specific and active in the
scene, not just she looked at the photograph and felt sad.
What photograph? Where is it?
What does she do with it? Does she turn it face down, then
turn it back again? Does she notice that the frame
is dusty except for the place where someone's thumb has been
rubbing the glass? Does she put it in the drawer,
then take it out because the drawer feels worse?
Objects are useful because they give emotions somewhere to
gather. They make the invisible visible.
Silence is not empty. In fiction, silence can be
packed with pressure. A pause after a question can
tell us more than a page of explanation, provided the reader
understands what is at stake. He asked if she had read the
letter. She folded the tea towel once,
twice. What letter that silence is
doing work? Unfinished sentences can also
hold emotion. I thought you'd what Nothing.
The danger with silence is vagueness.
Silence only works when the scene has created enough context
for the reader to understand what the silence costs.
If we don't know what the character wants, what they're
hiding, or what the relationship means, silence may just feel
like an empty gap. But when the pressure is clear,
silence can be devastating in the best possible literary
sense, not in the I accidentally deleted chapter 19 sense.
Emotion becomes much more powerful when the character has
to do something while feeling it.
A character grieving in bed can be moving, certainly, but a
character grieving while clearing out a hospital room,
signing paperwork, choosing which of their partners clothes
to keep, or pretending to be fine at a child's birthday party
has immediate scene pressure. Action forces emotion into
choice. Does she answer the phone?
Does he tell the truth? Does she leave the party?
Does he open the letter? Does she kiss him?
Does he pretend not to want her to?
When a character has to act, emotion becomes dramatic.
It affects decisions, it creates consequences.
It changes the scene. So if an emotional passage feels
flat, ask what does the character have to do right now?
Not in life, generally. In this scene, what are they
trying to get through? What are they trying to hide?
What choice is becoming harder? Emotion gets sharper when it has
a job. Subtext is often misunderstood
as make everything vague and hope the reader feels
sophisticated. Please don't.
Subtext is not vagueness. Subtext is when the surface
action or conversation carries A deeper emotional meaning. 2
characters arguing about washing up may really be arguing about
respect. A character asking Are you cold?
May really be asking can I take care of you?
A character saying you should go may really be saying, please
make it impossible for me to ask you to stay.
The surface needs to be clear. The underneath needs to be felt.
Good subtext depends on context, pressure, and desire.
What does the character want to say?
Why can't they say it? What do they say instead?
That little triangle creates emotional electricity.
And yes, sometimes it also creates a scene where two people
discuss a broken kettle with the intensity of a Greek tragedy,
which, frankly, is one of fiction's great pleasures.
Let's look at some examples. Example 1.
Grief over Explained Version Mara was overwhelmed with grief
when she walked into her father's flat.
Everywhere she looked reminded her of him, and she felt
devastated by the fact that he was gone forever.
Revised Version Mara let herself into the flat and stood with the
key still turned in the lock. The hallway smelled of furniture
Polish and the peppermint sweets he kept in the blue bowl by the
phone. His walking stick leaned against
the radiator exactly where he had left it, the rubber tip worn
to one side. She took off her coat because
that was what she always did when she came in.
Then she put it back on in the kitchen, his mug sat beside the
sink with a Half Moon of tea dried at the bottom.
Mara ran the tap, picked up the sponge, and stopped.
He would have tutted at that, leaving a mug like that.
She sat at the table and pressed both hands flat against the
oilcloth until the pattern blurred.
Why this works better. The revised version doesn't need
to say. Mara was overwhelmed with grief.
Because the scene gives us evidence.
The key in the lock, the smell of peppermint, The Walking
stick, the mug, the strange little action with the coat.
These details let the reader experience the absence.
The grief is not explained from outside.
It's built through what Maura notices, what she does
automatically, and where she finally stops.
Example 2. Anger over explained version.
Jonah was furious that his brother had lied to him again.
He felt betrayed and angry, and he knew he would never be able
to trust him. After this revised version,
Jonah read the message twice. Then he placed the phone on the
table, screened down, aligning it's edge with the grain of the
wood. Across from him, Caleb kept
talking, something about traffic, something about how
impossible parking was near the hospital.
Jonah nodded. He moved the salt cellar half an
inch to the left. Caleb's voice thinned.
You're being weird. No, Jonah said.
I'm listening. He looked up then, and Caleb
stopped talking all together. Why?
This works better. This version avoids the obvious
shouting and slammed fist version of anger.
Jonah's fury appears through control.
The phone goes screen down, the objects get arranged.
His politeness becomes threatening.
The reader feels the anger because the behaviour is precise
and slightly unnerving. We also get relationship
pressure. Caleb knows something is wrong
before Jonah says it. Example 3.
Loneliness over explained version.
After the divorce, Priya felt terribly lonely.
The house seemed empty without Dan and she realized how much
she missed having someone there. With her revised version, Priya
cooked too much pasta again. She stood over the pan, wooden
spoon in hand, watching the water foam towards the rim.
Enough for two, enough for leftovers, Enough, apparently,
for the small village she did not live in.
She drained it anyway, and tipped half into a container.
The lid didn't fit. Dan had always known which lid
went with which container, a talent Priya had once considered
deeply unattractive. She ain't standing at the
counter with the radio, one in the sitting room and the
television murmuring upstairs. At 9, the neighbour's front door
opened. Laughter spilled into the
hallway beyond the wall. Priya turned the radio up before
she could hear whose voice it was.
Why this works better? The loneliness is created
through routine, absence and sound.
The pastor is doing emotional work.
So is the wrong container lid. So are the radio, the television
and the neighbors. Laughter.
We don't need the line. Priya felt lonely because the
scene lets us feel the house trying and failing to be full.
Example 4. Shame over explained version.
Elliot felt deeply ashamed when his daughter asked why he had
missed her concert. He knew he had let her down, and
he hated himself for being such a bad father.
Revised version. Did you forget?
Lily asked. Elliot looked at the program on
the kitchen table. Blue paper, a silver star
sticker in the corner, her name printed halfway down the second
page. I got held up.
He said you said you'd come. The dishwasher clicked through
it's cycle. Elliot opened it, though it
hadn't finished, and steam lifted into his face.
Careful. Lily said automatically.
He took out a plate too hot to hold and set it on the counter.
I'll make it up to you. She gave a small shrug.
Not angry, Worse than angry. Elliot reached for another plate
because the first one had burned his fingers and he deserved that
at least. Why this works better.
The shame is not delivered as a label.
It appears through deflection, domestic action, and self
punishment. Elliot opens the dishwasher
because he needs something to do.
The hot plate becomes a small physical consequence.
He accepts Lily's not angry. Worse than angry gives us the
emotional pressure without over explaining the whole history.
Example 5. Desire or longing.
Over explained version Clara longed for Theo, though she knew
she shouldn't. She felt a powerful desire for
him and was overwhelmed by how badly she wanted to touch him.
Revised Version Theo reached past her for the book on the top
shelf. He was close enough that Clara
could see the tiny thread caught on his cuff, close enough to
smell rain in the wool of his coat.
She stepped back, the shelf pressed into her shoulder
blades. Sorry, he said it's fine.
He handed her the book, though she had not asked for it.
Their fingers did not touch. She made sure of that later,
after he had gone, Clara found the thread on the floorboards by
her shoe. She picked it up and held it for
one ridiculous second before dropping it into the bin.
Then, because apparently she had lost all dignity and most of her
sense, she took it out again. Why?
This works better. Longing often works beautifully
through restraint. Clara does not announce desire.
She manages proximity, avoids touch, notices tiny details, and
becomes absurdly attached to a loose thread.
The scene lets us feel both wanting and self reproach.
That combination is much richer than simply saying she desired
him. Example 6.
Fear or anxiety over explained version Nadia was terrified
about the interview. She felt anxious and convinced
herself that everything would go wrong.
Revised Version. Nadia arrived 26 minutes early,
too early to go in, too late to go home and change the shoes,
which were suddenly wrong, too shiny, too loud on the pavement,
too much like the shoes of someone who believed in herself.
She walked once around the block, then again slower.
At the entrance. She checked her reflection in
the black glass of the door and saw only a pale Oval, a mouth,
the collar of her blouse sitting crooked inside.
Someone laughed. Not at her, obviously not at
her. They couldn't even see her.
She wiped her hands on her skirt, pulled the door open, and
forgot for one blank second the name of the person she was
supposed to ask for. Why this works better?
The revised version gives anxiety a pattern.
Time becomes distorted, the shoes become wrong, thoughts
correct themselves and then panic anyway.
The body responds, but not in generic shorthand.
The final moment for getting the name puts the anxiety under
immediate pressure. Now let's be properly nuanced,
because direct emotional naming is not the enemy.
Sometimes it works beautifully. It can work when the emotion is
not the main point of the beat. If your character is irritated
because the train is late and the real scene is about the
stranger they meet on the platform, you may not need to
dramatise irritation through 4 paragraphs of ticket barriers
and passive aggressive sighing she was irritated may do the
job. Direct naming can also work when
clarity matters more than subtlety.
Sometimes the reader needs to know where we are emotionally so
the scene can move. It can work when the named
emotion arrives after enough evidence has already been
established. For example, if we've watched a
character avoid the hospital room, fold and refold A scarf
and ask 3 unrelated questions about parking, then a simple
line like he was afraid might land with force.
The line doesn't replace the evidence, it gathers it.
Direct naming can also work when the simplicity of the line
creates impact. After a complex scene, a plain
sentence can be devastating. She missed him, he was afraid.
I wanted to stay. Those lines can work because
they are not trying to do all the emotional labour alone.
They arrive after the scene has earned them.
Naming can also be useful in a moment of self recognition.
A character may spend a whole scene behaving badly,
deflecting, criticizing, fussing with details, and then finally
realise it wasn't anger, it was fear.
That kind of naming can be powerful because the character
has discovered something. It can also be useful when
narration needs to move quickly. Not every emotional beat
deserves a full dramatic unfolding.
Sometimes we summarise because the story needs to get from one
important moment to another, and direct naming becomes more
interesting when the surrounding evidence complicates or
contradicts it. She was relieved is one thing.
She was relieved, which was why she could not understand why she
kept checking. The window is another.
The labels opens a question instead of closing 1.
So when does direct naming become heavy-handed?
It tends to become heavy-handed when the same emotion is named
repeatedly. It becomes heavy-handed when the
prose explains what the reader already understands.
It becomes heavy-handed when the label replaces behaviour,
pressure, or choice. And it becomes heavy-handed when
the narration tells the reader how to interpret the scene
before the scene has earned that interpretation.
So here's the practical test. If you remove the emotional
label, can the reader still in further feeling?
If yes, you may not need the label.
If no, the answer may not be to put the label back.
The answer may be to strengthen the evidence.
Give the reader evidence, not just the verdict.
Here's a simple exercise you can use on one of your own scenes.
Choose a scene where the emotion matters, not necessarily the
biggest scene in the book. In fact, it may be easier to
start with a smaller 1A disagreement, a goodbye, a
moment of rejection, a moment where someone wants something
and cannot quite ask for it. Then work through these steps.
One highlight every named emotion.
Look for words like angry, sad, ashamed, lonely, relieved,
heartbroken, guilty, nervous, overwhelmed, frightened,
disappointed, devastated. Also look for phrases like she
realised, she felt or he was filled with or they were
overcome by. Again, these are not crimes,
they are clues. 2 Ask what evidence the scene gives the
reader. If the scene says the character
is angry, where do we see anger in action?
If it says they are lonely, what are they noticing?
If it says they are ashamed, what are they avoiding?
If it says they are afraid, what choice becomes harder?
Three. Choose one or two emotional
labels to keep. If they are useful, you do not
have to remove them all. Keep the ones that create
clarity, rhythm, impact or self recognition.
Cut or revise the ones that repeat what the reader already
knows. 4 Replace some labels with behaviour, sensory detail,
dialogue, object choice, or contradiction.
Instead of she was lonely, try showing what she does in the
empty house. Instead of He was ashamed, show
what he cannot look at. Instead of they were furious,
show how their politeness changes 5.
Identify what the character wants in the scene.
Emotion gets stronger when it pushes against desire.
What does the character want right now?
An apology, escape, control, comfort, the truth for the other
person not to notice 6 Identify what the character does not want
to feel. This is often where the good
stuff lives. They may not want to feel needy.
They may not want to feel jealous.
They may not want to feel grief, desire, fear, tenderness, hope.
The avoided emotion often leaks out in behaviour 7 Revise the
scene so the emotion emerges through pressure and change.
Something should shift. The character may not get what
they want. They may get it and discover it
doesn't help. They may fail to hide the
feeling, they may hide it successfully, but at a cost the
reader can feel. Let's do a tiny example.
Original version. Sam felt guilty for missing his
mother's call. He knew she needed him, and he
hated that he had ignored her. Now the emotional label is
guilt. Useful signpost.
But what's the evidence a revised version might be?
Sam listened to the voicemail in the supermarket car park.
His mother's voice was bright, too bright.
The voice she used when she wanted him to know she wasn't
asking for anything. Only me.
No need to ring back. He stared at the trolley return
Bay, where one trolley had been shoved in at an angle, blocking
all the others. No need to ring back.
The milk warmed in the boot. His phone stayed in his hand
until the screen went dark. Notice that we haven't said
guilty, but we've created evidence.
The mother's voice, the phrase no need to ring back.
The blocked trolley. The phone in his hand, the milk
warming in the boot. The guilt is now happening in
the reader, not just being announced to them.
So let's bring this together. Strong emotional writing is not
about hiding emotion. It's not about being coy, vague
or so subtle that the reader needs a torch, a map and a
postgraduate qualification in subtext.
It's about giving the reader the right evidence.
When you name the emotion too early or too often, you may give
the reader the verdict before they felt the case.
But when you show emotion through behaviour, thought,
sensory detail, dialogue, avoidance, contradiction,
objects, silence, action and subtext, you invite the reader
into the emotional experience. They don't just understand that
the character is grieving, they feel the mug beside the sink.
They don't just understand that the character is angry, they
feel the terrible calm of the phone placed face down on the
table. They don't just understand that
the character is lonely, they hear the radio turned up against
the laughter through the wall. So here's the phrase I'd love
you to take with you. Don't explain the feeling till
the scene has given us something to feel.
Or even shorter, give the reader evidence, not just the verdict.
And remember, if your draft is full of emotional labels, that
does not mean you failed. It means your draft is telling
you what the scene wants to do. Those labels are signposts.
They're little flags in the ground saying there's emotion
here, come back later with better tools.
Revision is where you build the evidence.
Revision is where she was devastated, becomes the key left
in the lock, the coat taken off and put back on, the mug no one
will ever use again. That's where the emotion begins
to happen inside the reader. And that is the real magic
trick. Less look, she's sad.
More, Oh no, I'm sad now. Which is admittedly a strange
thing to wish upon your reader, but in fiction, that's often the
job. Your practical task this week is
to take one emotional scene from your own writing and highlight
every named emotion. Don't judge them, don't panic,
don't set fire to the manuscript in a symbolic act of artistic
rebirth. Very dramatic but terrible for
the carpets. Just choose one or two labels to
keep, then replace the rest with stronger evidence, Behaviour,
sensory detail, dialogue, silence, objects, contradiction,
pressure. And if this episode was useful,
do follow or subscribe to Master Fiction Writing.
Leave a review or share it with a writer friend who keeps
explaining everyone's feelings as if the reader has popped out
to make tea and missed the emotional point.
Thanks for listening and happy writing.