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Chapter 7: Conveying Characters’ Thoughts in Style
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Gesturing towards body language
Describing your character’s feelings and emotions can be difficult. You can
all too easily fall into the trap of saying ‘he felt angry’ or ‘she felt sad’, which
doesn’t really convey the emotions directly to readers. But you can get
around this problem by using the techniques I present in this section.
Showing not telling
The golden rule of creative writing is to show your readers rather than tell
them. Scientific research shows that emotions are felt and expressed in the
body before they come into your conscious mind. This is why people often
find themselves trembling with shock or tensing up with fury before they’re
able to recognise or control their emotions.
The best way convey characters’ feelings is through their body language. If
you’re writing from the viewpoint of a character, describe what she notices
about her bodily reactions to the emotion. If you’re looking at a character
from the outside, describe what she’s doing. Writers are often afraid of being
melodramatic by over-dramatising a character’s physical reactions, but in fact
people often react more dramatically in reality than you may think.
Here’s a description from William Wharton’s autobiographical account of his
reaction on being told that several members of his family had been killed in
a car accident. Notice how the physical actions are completely outside the
character’s control:
I realise I’d better get off my feet or I’m going to fall down. I slump onto
the floor with my head against the side of the couch, the way I watch
baseball on television . . . I know I feel terrible. I can’t stop shaking my
head. It’s totally involuntary.
—William Wharton (Wrongful Deaths, Granta, 1994)
The physical details are telling. Later, after Wharton telephones his remaining
daughter to give her the dreadful news, he writes: ‘I put the phone back
in the cradle the wrong way, then turn it around.’ How well that small detail
conveys the reality that even in the most terrible situations people distract
themselves with trivial things.
If you doubt people’s dramatic reactions, look at the body language of a footballer
after scoring a goal or an athlete after winning a race. Look at photographs
of people in extreme situations. In your own writing, try to describe
what the character does in exact detail.