Speaking through the teeth with forced restraint.Stiff posture, rigid muscles, a corded neck.Here’s an excerpt from the Frustration entry:įRUSTRATION – DEFINITION: vexation caused by unresolved problems or unmet needs the feeling of being hindered To show Sam’s frustration in a way that will really connect with the reader, we need some cues that are fresh and unique to Sam’s character. The flushed face, the clenching fists-we’ve seen them a million times. Unfortunately, the cues used here are fairly weak. The best way to do this is by giving emotional cues that the reader can relate to. Another sign of trouble is when the emotion is named (It was so frustrating) because readers don’t want to be told how Sam feels they want to feel the frustration along with him. First off, there’s a lot of telling, which is hardly ever a good idea. While this passage clearly conveys Sam’s frustration, it’s a clunky read. Why did he always have to throw his money in my face? It was so frustrating. He always did this-it’s why I’d made him promise on the phone to let me pay for once. He was already reaching for his money clip. I gestured for the bill, felt my face getting hot. The first draft might go something like this. Let’s say you’re working on a scene about sibling rivalry, and you need to express Sam’s frustration over his younger brother’s insistence on paying for lunch. And when we started talking with other writers, it became clear that many of them also struggled in this area.īecause clichéd and overused emotional descriptions seem to be a near-universal problem in the writing community, I’d like to address it by sharing an excerpt from The Emotion Thesaurus and giving some ideas on how it can be used to clarify your character’s feelings and freshen up your descriptive writing. We were tired of our characters always shifting their feet to show nervousness and narrowing their eyes when angry. This is why Angela and I wrote The Emotion Thesaurus. This is a tall order for writers who tend to reuse the same emotional indicators over and over. Above all, the emotional description needs to be fresh and engaging. ![]() Each scene must achieve a balance between showing too little feeling and showing too much. It is easy to see the power of emotion and how it connects a reader to the story and characters. They read to connect with characters who provide entertainment and whose trials may add meaning to their own life journeys. Why? Because above all else, readers pick up a book to have an emotional experience. The plot line becomes a dry riverbed of meaningless events that no reader will take time to read. Without emotion, a character’s personal journey is pointless. It lies at the core of every character’s decision, action, and word, all of which drive the story. All successful novels, no matter what genre, have one thing in common: emotion, writes Bella Puglisi one half of The Bookshelf Muse blogging duo, and co-author of The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Expression.
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