My philosophy when it comes to writing emotions is that it’s important to understand what feeling them is like. Unfortunately, for me as a writer, this means that when I’m feeling some-kind-of-way, I get all mindful about it. When I feel extreme emotions, I use it for study, I have a tendency to journal about it, so I can come back to it later when I need it. Here is my advice on how to tackle emotional writing.
Emotional Writing: write what you know
“They” tell you to write what you know. This advice, I think, really comes into play when we are talking about emotions. You can study the mechanics of spaceships, or make it up as you go along. But, what you can’t really study, what you can’t really just look up, is how it feels when you get dumped, or how it feels to be really sad over the loss of a pet or a loved one. You can’t study those things, and expect it to come out feeling authentic, you need to experience them.
I’m not saying that you need to experience the exact thing you are writing about in order to hit the emotions right. What I am saying is that everyone probably has times in their life where things have happened that made them feel a close enough facsimile to what the character is going through that they can use it. The trick is to remember, and do it safely, if it’s a traumatic event. For example: I’ve never been an assassin, but there have been moments in my life where I have witnessed things that allow me to feel like I can come close to that emotional state.
Use Observation
As a writer, you should be watching the world around you. Hopefully participating, but also observing pretty keenly what is going on around you. This is helpful when there is someone close to you who is going through something. You don’t want to go all Harriet the Spy on them and use them, but you know, it’s okay to file away their emotional state for later writing. An example of this: Your friend is having a freak-out because she found out her boyfriend is cheating, she is crying at points, but also angry, she’s pulling her hair out literally, she’s also asking if it’s her fault, somehow. You are helping her and making sure that she’s okay, of course, but also just noting down in your mind how the different emotions are at play while she’s going through this devastating time. Emotions are tricky and layered, nuanced and sometimes baffling.
Being able to show all of those things to a reader, or an audience is a difficult task, and one of the most powerful tools used to tackle this task is both self-observation, and observing the world around you.
Reading
Of course, you can always go back to your favorite works that have really wonderful emotional writing in them, and see how that author tackled it. This is where being well-read is helpful. If you are stuck on a scene where the character is going through something you have no way of ever fathoming, you can go back and read about it through a different author’s eyes, what did they do that made the scene compelling, how did they make you feel what you want your audience to feel?
Show the emotion, like I mentioned before, not tell it. Don’t say that the character felt happy, but say for example: her face broke out into a grin, her body felt light, she felt as though she could run a marathon without stopping, or jump to the moon. Or something like that, make the readers understand the emotion without being told WHAT to feel.
Projecting
This is one that I have a tendency to use while I’m in the process of writing. I just, kind of, project myself into the situation and think about how I would feel if I was there. I feel like it’s the simplest, just think about being that person in their shoes, how would you feel there–in that moment–and then write out those emotions. However, this idea does have its drawbacks because your emotions may not match those you are trying to convey for the character you’ve created. For example: my stone-cold assassin isn’t going to start crying or screaming when she sees a dead body. She would be cold and calculating and would think about her next move.
Conclusion
There are many ways to get to the heart of the emotion that you want to convey for your character. It is best to remember that emotions are faceted and nuanced things, and that they may start out one way, and then turn into something else, and then finish completely different. Showing emotions is very important, it is boring to read emotion words, it’s much more dynamic to read what kinds of actions those emotions are creating within the character.
Thanks for reading! Let me know if this is something that is helpful and interesting, or if you would rather read about other things.