OH, feelings, feelings, feelings. How can your write feelings without using their tag words (ie: love, hate, anger, panic, scared, happy, grief, etc.).

While these words are used in language they are avoided in fiction for the main reason that they tell what the character is feeling, instead of showing what the character is feeling. If you see a woman crying do you need to ask her if she is sad? – No, no, no…because you can see her.

With writing the reader has to picture the action in their own mind, which means you have to create the image with words of a woman crying, without writing the word sad, hysterical or grief-stricken. Basically, in order to write character emotion you have to show – with no tell. And there it is, in a nutshell - or this is what is commonly thought. (You thought this would be easy, didn’t you?)

The show-no-tell theory is really only applicable when you are creating drama. There are many instances when tell is not only appropriate but necessary to understand why your character is doing what he/she is doing. Also, there’s no use describing something in a long drawn out show manner when it has no real import on your story – this is when tell is important to use.

As this column is about emotion, I am going to stick with show-don’t-tell examples – as emotions are drama, just remember what I said about your story overall. Try to stick to showing to add valuable interest to emotions/drama and telling to keep the pace and motivation of the story going.

As I am sure you’re not at all satisfied with my nutshell answer, let me elaborate on creating emotion.

Think of the five human senses and apply them to your emotion word - this will create sensory detail: Sight, Smell, Touch, Taste, and Hearing.
If I took the word fear (or scared or any other similar word) and added sensory details what type of physical reactions would I get? Perhaps a metallic taste in my mouth? - hairs standing on end? – blasted by the drum of my own heart? These are the types of descriptions you want to use instead of using the label or tag word for fear.

Here goes, a classic example of what not to do (from my own writing): “Molly felt fortunate as she turned to watch the royal blue and white architecture of Greece slowly fade into a sea-foam horizon.” - From Gypsy Wind.

Writing that Molly felt ‘fortunate’ is a tell – and not a show. To describe this emotion I need to picture what type of physical or mental reactions does one have when you feel fortunate.

In my mind, when I think of the word fortunate, I immediately get a grin – or a smirk. My eyes light up a little and crinkle at the edges. If I picture myself as fortunate, what other type of physical reaction would I get? Do you get the impression that your heart would swell just a little bit, with the pace remaining slow and steady? Perhaps my stance would change, my arms splayed open demonstrating an invincible body language. Fortunate is just another word for lucky – what type of physical tells does one have when they feel lucky? These are all cues that you need to remember when writing emotion. Think of your word, think of synonyms for your word, think of physical reactions to both words and then rework your sentence structure to show the emotion.

To fix poor Molly’s emotion I could write: “Molly’s face lit, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth as she turned to watch the royal blue and white architecture of Greece slowly fade into a sea-foam horizon.”
Perhaps not the shortest sentence in the world, but an improvement.

One last word of advice, avoid clichés. The easiest cliché to pick up on is that of love. Think of clichés as over used bits of writing (and language for that matter) to which everyone knows the meaning. There’s no risk of confusion, but really they hold no oomph - they’ve lost it all. Clichés make your story regular, and at times boring.

Take fear again. Heart pounding, heart racing – these are clichés. You have to think of a new and better way to describe this same reaction.

When it comes to describing emotion, and you really do get stuck in your description, ask yourself - is this really the best way to describe what you want to show..? If it is, then you’ll be fine. If you can think of something better, then by all means – do so.