Practice Writing Nonverbal Emotion
What are they? All those tiny clues that reveal how your characters experience a moment or a scene.
Still from Netflix series Stranger Things, Season 3, Episode 7. Photo: Tanya Clarke 2021
Through the Television
This is a story I’ve told before. It isn’t my story, it’s my mum’s. It’s the reason why she can’t sleep at night with the bedroom curtains closed.
When my mum was 8 years old, she and her family were staying at a family friend’s house for a few nights. The friends had a television set. Great excitement! My mum's family didn't own a television at this point. This was the 1950s and televisions were new and expensive.
In an unfamiliar bed, my mum was finding it hard to get to sleep so she went downstairs to see her parents. They were watching the film A Tale of Two Cities. My mum remembers walking into the room just at the moment a man (in the film) climbed in through an open window and stabbed someone to death in their bed. Yikes! The fright of that moment, the intense emotion and fear, has stayed with my mum all these years.
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For this week let's practice writing nonverbal emotions. All those tiny clues that reveal how your characters experience a moment or a scene.
To help you, I've been reading The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi. There's plenty of advice here in the introduction on how to avoid common problems when writing nonverbal emotions. This is where the often quoted adage "show don't tell" really comes into play.
“By definition, nonverbal emotion can’t be told. It has to be shown. This makes it difficult to write because telling is easier than showing...You don’t want the reader to only see what’s happening; you want them to feel the emotion, and to experience it along with the character...writer’s need to show the character’s physical and internal responses rather than stating the emotion outright.”
The Emotion Thesaurus by Ackerman & Puglisi, kindle version LOC 122-127
Take some time to think about how you feel in different situations. What happens to your body? Are there physical ticks and habits you revert to unconsciously? How do your muscles feel? Your heart. Your breathing. What happens to your body when you're delighted, happy, frightened or under severe stress?
Observe how other people respond to these situations. Remember our emotions exist along a continuum from mild to extreme with each of us responding in different ways with varying intensity. Bring those observations into your characters. Show the reader those emotional responses.
For writers, showing takes a lot more work. And more words. But the result is significant. Your characters will feel better drawn with greater depth. Your readers will feel more connected to your stories and committed to the narrative. It's definitely worth the effort.
Until next time.
