(Writing) How do you show deep emotion?

Dwight

I’m concerned that my characters are shallow, especially in the depth of their emotions. I hope TBers can come to the rescue with methods or even tricks they use to involve the reader with their characters when they are deeply affected by what has happened.

It might help to deal with an example situation for folks to comment on, which I’ll present in bald absence of emotion. I’m hoping you’ll suggest ways in which the reader would get worked up about it. Any little suggestion will help.

Scenario: Rose sits at her desk in the living room, flicks through her husband’s phone inbox looking for their son’s message about what time he would be home, and finds a text starting “dearest,” then, “here’s my new number” with a mobile number. Her husband Steve is lying on the settee watching football.

dorothyd

most reactions are physical, feeling of being punched in the stomach mostly. Whilst we say our 'hearts' are damaged in fact most of the nerves are concentrated in the solar plexus so you feel as if you have been thumped. She would. Air would be expelled n a rush, she would hold her stomach, she would find it hard to breathe - IF she had no idea.

LilyC

Cold fear shuddered through Rose's core, stilling her heart, stopping her breath. She stared at Steve through a mist of unbidden tears. How could he? After all this time, everything they'd been through, all they had done together. A thousand questions spiralled through her brain. Who is she? Where had they met? What have I done to make him want someone else?

Rose pushed her chair back from the desk and stood up. With slow, deliberate steps she approached her husband of twenty years, wondering in that brief moment whether she'd even be able to speak.

"Alright love?" Steve said, glancing up at his wife. His smile faded as she held out the phone with the message clearly displayed on the screen. Rose swallowed back the pain. She had to know.

"Why?"

LilyC

Great thread, by the way.

dorothyd

Yes it is, just the sort of thing we need!

Vijay

You will need to create real and believable characters to begin with, to then get the real emotion- it will come easier that way round. Though creating real characters is very difficult. Also how do you show the deep emotion- again various way of doing it, via dialogue, narrative or both. It will be similar to acting I think- some actors will over dramatise it, others can move you by a simple look.

Dudess

Employ the senses, either focus on one and build up,or hit with all three. Physical pain is a good one to show, using similies or metaphors, depending on the rest of your story.

Rose threw the mobile at Steve, the thunk on his forehead brought them both to their feet.
'What was that-'
'Who is the cheap-' Rose's voice cracked and snot built in her nose as she blundered on through tears.

Carol

Agree with all that's been said, but I would like to ask, why would she think that a text starting 'dearest' means he's being unfaithful?
I'd wonder if it was an older female relative- who might address a family member in that familiar way.
So presumably she has already got suspicions from other indicators?

Sorry if I've sidetracked.

lexia

Rose stared at the phone, blood racing through her ears. The thudding and pounding in her head was matched by her heartbeat. Surely, she would pass out. She swallowed hard and tried to form a sentence as the cheering from the television almost deafened her.

(imagining yourself as the character in the situation is the way I would do it )

Good luck !

Phots Moll

Presumably the reader knows what she's like normally, so you can now show her acting out of character. If she hardly drinks she could pour a large vodka, or perhaps bite her nails when usually they're imaculately manicured - anything unusual will help show this incident has upset her.

pbw

[quote=Carol]Sorry if I've sidetracked.[/quote]

Possibly you haven't - could be a scenario where it is a female relative - favourite aunt/niece/cousin and the missing name has caused a misunderstanding . Great twist for the story!

Vijay

Rose read the text message on her husband’s mobile whilst she had been looking to see what time her son was coming home. It started with dearest, the word in itself was nothing but the name at the end made her heart stop. She didn’t recognise the name, or the number. She looked up to see Steve lying on the sofa watching the football, without a care in the world. Another Saturday afternoon, the ironing was still to be done; the autumn light coming through the windows was harsh. Her breathing changed and she read the text again, her suspicions long simmering in heart were out in the open- maybe he had left that text there on purpose, maybe he wanted her to know. Is this how twenty years of marriage was going to end? She felt faint, her mind reeling, tears formed in her eyes, she bit her lower lip and then the tears rolled down her cheeks. She shook as she cried and the phone dropped out of her hand. Steve looked up and said, I know how you feel love, Liverpool are playing so poorly at the moment. ;-)

Dwight

Now then, Vijay - letting your emotions run away with you ;) . But what you said in your first post rings very true: the characters in your novel can be developed like actors on screen or stage and there's no single 'right way' of showing deep emotion. I want to explore it though.

Thank you to all of you for your ideas. Very useful. I think an author doesn't need to confine themselves to showing; a deft mixture of showing and telling can work nicely. Dialogue is generally considered to be the way to show character emotion as it comes tumbling out, and dialogue can be internalised as you showed, Lily. What about a mixture of dialogue with more descriptive 'telling' in short narrative in between?

That's interesting, what you say about the pit of the stomach for intense feeling, Dorothy. Apart from the physical aspect of emotions, though, there must be a corresponding rush of anxiety as Rose's frightened imagination begins to scroll through all the implications of this message. With deepening horror.

What about that angle?

dorothyd

the corresponding rush of anxiety follows closely on the heels of the pit of the stomach pain. Don't go for too much feeling in one go. My question would be, why would 'anxiety'' necessarily follow?
s in ... when my husband told me he wanted to leave, the pain was so intense I screamed hysterically for some minutes. Anxiety was the last emotion I felt. That came later, when I considered the implications of selling up and moving away. The first ones were pain, loss, rejection ... anxiety is the wrong emotion, I think. Outright fear that she is to be rejected, abandoned, would come first.

casey

I think her initial reaction would be shock and disbelief. So she'd question - What the..Who the hell? ..She looks up at Steve lying on the sofa. Would he? Could he? How? When? She'd try to imagine it. Then she'd scroll though all his messages, contacts etc looking for more evidence, the sickness churning in her stomach all the while. She'd want to be sure of her ground before challenging him, leaving no room for his denials or excuses, her fear turning the sickness to bitter bile.

Dwight

Fascinating that you have first hand experience of such a situation, or close to it, Dorothy, and therefore a head start on the rest of us on the nature of the emotions that would rise willy-nilly in the pit of her stomach. I jumped ahead, unrealistically, to the implications springing from an overworking imagination in the panic of the moment. You are getting close to what I want to nail down in my analysis: the order in which she would feel/do things. Then how the author would show it.

I think that's very valid, Casey: she would question in her own head. Followed by more deliberate steps, possibly in a catatonic state of bewilderment while nonetheless following an instinctive line of action: to isolate the facts in their stark blackness and working herself up to facing him with it.

Dwight

Philip Pullman pulls a clever trick in the matter of showing inner thoughts and emotion in depth. I call it a trick but in his successful hands I dare say I should call it a device. Sorry to go on about Pullman across various threads, but I’m on the second of his Dark Materials books at the moment and I’m in awe of his story-telling wisdom.

You’ll remember his use of daemons for everyone in Northern Lights, but in case you’re not aware, I’ll explain briefly that every person has a non-human animal ‘other self’, who is always with them, usually on their shoulder, and reflects their character. Lyra, the 11-year-old (?) heroine has a daemon named Pantalaimon who variously becomes a moth, a bat, a cat, a squirrel, depending on Lyra’s moods, since the daemon is always the other sex from its owner and until the character becomes an adult, it can change its shape according to its owners moods and reactions. Clever, eh?

Anyway, on the occasion of Lyra’s much admired lady friend, Mrs Coulter’s, cocktail party, Lyra makes an unpleasant discovery that would change her view of her from one pole to the other. But the way was prepared for such a switch by an earlier little event involving strong feelings. Mrs C, whose daemon was a golden haired monkey, was teaching Lyra some useful facts about science, and not being one to like being thought of as uninformed, Lyra threw some dangerous information she had discovered into the conversation. I’ll continue in Philip Pullman’s words:

--When Mrs Coulter was telling her about electrons, Lyra said expertly, “Yes, they’re negatively charged particles. Sort of like Dust, except that Dust isn’t charged.”

As soon as she said that, Mrs Coulter’s daemon snapped his head up to look at her, and all the golden fur on his little body stood up, bristling, as if it were charged itself. Mrs Coulter laid a hand on his back.

“Dust?” she said.

“Yeah. You know, from space, that Dust.”

“What do you know about Dust, Lyra?”

“Oh, that it comes out of space, and it lights people up, if you have a special sort of camera to see it by. Except not children. It doesn’t affect children.”

“Where did you learn that from?”

By now Lyra was aware that there was a powerful tension in the room, because Pantalaimon had crept ermine-like on to her lap and was trembling violently.

“Just someone in Jordan,” Lyra said vaguely. “I forget who. I think it was one of the Scholars.”

[ She goes on to make up a bit of a story as to who told her. Then it carries on...]

“I see,” said Mrs Coulter.

“Is it right, what he told me? Did I get it wrong?”

“Well, I don’t know. I’m sure you know much more than I do. Let’s get back to those electrons...”

Later, Pantalaimon said, “You know when all the fur stood up on her daemon? Well, I was behind him, and she grabbed his fur so tight her knuckles went white. You couldn’t see. It was a long time till his fur went down. I thought he was going to leap at you.”

That was strange, no doubt; but neither of them knew what to make of it. --

So Pullman’s little daemons act out the feelings and emotions of the two characters. We see the emotions before our very eyes. What the reader understands is that what Lyra had mentioned in her conversation caused her beloved Mrs C to grab at herself to prevent an open reaction, so important the matter was to her. He could have simply told us this, of course. What a lot of detail and conversation in order to show it; but that’s all part of Philip Pullman’s way of bringing us along with him in this fascinating tale.

casey

Very visual too. Wish we could all put a daemon on our characters' shoulders.

Red

The word emotion comes from the same root derivative as 'motivation' (movere). That's the key: the motivation behind why your character feels a certain way at any given point.

Where emotion is concerned, is not about writing what you know, but more about what you feel. You have to be right inside your character's head to understand the root cause of any given thread of emotion, be it anxiety, anger, sadness, grief, empathy and so on. You have to dig deep, as a writer and bring those feelings to the forefront, to relive them in order to give your character the same responses.

Tolstoy once said one should ‘evoke in oneself a sensation which one has experienced before...to communicate this sensation in such a way that others may experience the same sensation...’

Remember, emotion is active and reactive. So in other words, a character can be emotional because of a situation or someone. Then it becomes reactive as the character reacts to that emotion. And from all that you get the motivation as to WHY your character does or says what they do.

Vijay

Following on from Red ( I thought you were a guy all this time, don't know why by the way)and well said Red. I'm just thinking aloud on this point- in order to show deep emotion then you have to write what you feel- that is divided into two parts- emotion plus the physical aspect. So in any given scene- you would write the feeling plus show the physical action to give a more complete picture. I don't know if you can get away with just one part of it- just the feelings for example.

I almost gave up writing after reading Tolstoy- he was too great a writer.

pbw

[quote=Dwight]a deft mixture of showing and telling can work nicely[/quote]

I'm glad you think that. I agree with you. I sometimes feel (not on this forum but in other interactions I have) that I am always being told to 'show not tell' and to have no 'telling' possibilities at all, for me, is too limiting.

Dwight

[quote=Vijay]I don't know if you can get away with just one part of it- just the feelings for example.[/quote]

Except in the case of a Hamlet figure, perhaps, Vijay? His procrastination might interrupt him after his emotional feelings, with events overtaking him before he had physically done anything about it. Consequently he would PLAN to take action... when the opportunity arose.

[quote=Red]That's the key: the motivation behind why your character feels a certain way at any given point.[/quote]

[quote=Red]You have to dig deep, as a writer and bring those feelings to the forefront, to relive them in order to give your character the same responses. [/quote]

Are you thinking here of the character's goals, Red? Their drive? The ultimate bottom line of their character and personality? Yes, I can see how that would strongly colour their initial feelings and the physical action they took as a result. For Rose in the example at the top of the thread, for example, after her discovery, there would be a wide difference between her feelings if she laid huge store for her life's happiness on a happy, permanent family, and if she were an ambitious woman who believed in her ability to create a business empire.

Red

[quote= Dwight]Are you thinking here of the character's goals, Red?[/quote]

Yes Dwight, everything you write will have a sense of motivation behind it. Their personality shapes the way they act and react. One woman may cry after her lover leaves her, another might throw a huge wobbly and rip his clothes to shreds. How would Rose truly reacts is down to her personality. I have a main character who is driven by the raw emotion of a past event. When she recalls this event it prompts her to make the decisions that shape the rest of the story.

Vijay wrote: I don't know if you can get away with just one part of it- just the feelings for example.

This would be difficult because emotion itself is a physical trait that produces physical responses. Even if you had a character that doesn’t openly react to a bad or terrible situation or event (i.e being numbed by a situation) this is still a physiological response.

I love Tolstoy’s work and philosophy. “A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul.”

Vijay

This is the point I think- if you only write one part ie feelings or just the physical aspect, then you will have shallow characters?
A lot will depend on the writers skill.

Dwight your example is good. Rose should feel anger, humiliation, pain- and you would have to show the corresponding physical aspects to give a rounded picture.
This hopefully would enable you or anyone for that matter to get the real emotion. Also How Steve responds would need to be shown, so in this chapter if you Rushed the scene, it would probably come across shallow.

Dwight

I agree it mustn't be rushed, Vijay. This would have to be a crunch scene, setting up the problems that the characters would face in the coming chapters. Neverthless, I agree with those like Dorothy who say that it would be fruitful to write such a scene without preparation: let the two characters get on with it, regardless of plot considerations. Then I would return to it, see where I had missed opportunities in dialogue or plot twists, and massage it before carrying on. In the case of crunch scenes like this, where charcters could turn corners, I would prefer to fix it firmly before progressing with my first draft, rather than plough on to the end of the book and then reconsider what decisions may or may not have been made.

Dwight

I've just been reading through the feedback I was sent by my critique editor. She was regretting my use of clich

dorothyd

we are clever, aren't we? and yes, she's right.

AlisonF

She stared at those words, bright white and spread across the screen in flagrant mockery. She stared at them so hard and for so long that they ceased to look right. But by then their meaning was branded on her brain. Who... who would be calling her husband 'dearest'? For a moment she wondered if it was some kind of joke. She wanted to scroll through all his messages, dig out every last one that had been sent, for there must be more. She wanted to know. She looked at him sitting there; his heart wasn't thumping double time, his breathing hadn't altered in the slightest. She slipped out the room, taking his phone with her.

My advice is: slow it right down. Every beat matters. Oh, and LIVE IT.

Dwight

[quote=AlisonF]My advice is: slow it right down. Every beat matters. Oh, and LIVE IT.[/quote]

I agree, Alison. When visualising a scene and making myself part of it so as to see what my senses are experiencing, I tend to see it as a film scene. I get so carried away when watching a film and drawn right into the world of that movie that this seems to work for me. The rest is author's breadth/depth of imagination, I suppose, to dig into the possible permutations of extensions and twists. I'm currently working to alter the dynamic of the relationship of my two main characters, so that where before one was well-meaning and the other feisty, they will both now have attitude to the point where their worlds are close to being adversarial. Meanwhile there'll be a clear romantic hope in my POV.