Revealing Emotion Using Show vs Tell

 

Hello everyone, Winnie Griggs here. I’ve got a really busy schedule for the next week or so, mainly due to an upcoming release (yaaay!) so I will apologize for the brevity of this post.

What I thought I'd do today is give you a short refresher on how to reveal emotion using show vs tell techniques. Showing emotion rather than simply telling what your character is feeling allows readers to experience characters' feelings along with them, fostering a deeper connection to your characters and so your story..

Let's look at four techniques to help you accomplish this.

1. Use Physical Descriptions:
   Often, our bodies reflect our emotions. A character who is angry might clench their fists, while someone who is nervous could tap their foot incessantly. Instead of saying "Joan was sad," you could write, "Tears welled up in Joan's eyes as she stared at the empty room."
   
   
2.  Dialogue and Voice:
   The way characters speak can reveal their emotional state. A happy character may speak quickly or laugh a lot, while a worried character might stutter or trail off. Consider this example: instead of writing "Emma was worried about her exam," you could show her asking her friend, "Do you think...what if I don't pass?"
   
   
3.  Inner Thoughts and Feelings:
   Getting inside a character's head can be an effective way to show their emotions. Rather than telling the reader, "Jake was angry at his boss," you might write, "Jake replayed his boss's words over and over in his mind, each repetition fueling his simmering resentment."
   
   
4.  Actions and Reactions:
   How your character acts and reacts can say a lot about their emotional state. Instead of stating "Lisa was excited," write, "Lisa couldn't sit still. She kept checking the time, her heart pounding each time the minute hand jumped forward."

Remember, the key to showing emotion is subtlety. It's about painting a picture that allows the reader to infer the characters' feelings from their actions, dialogue, and internal monologues. Practice these techniques, and you'll find your characters coming alive with emotional depth and authenticity.

 What do you think of the above points - do you agree with them? Can you think of other techniques to show a character’s emotion without naming it?  Leave a comment to be entered in a drawing for one of my backlist books.

And speaking of new releases :) Disarming His Heart releases on the 20th! It's the 6th book in the really fun multi-author Pink Pistol Sisterhood series but it can definitely be read as a standalone. The series follows the journey of a one-of-a-kind pistol with supposed matchmaking properties. The first book opens in 1894 and the eleventh and final one takes place in the current day. Mine takes place in 1911. Here's a bit more about it.

DISARMING HIS HEART

A sharpshooter hiding her identity. A preacher with a guilty past. Will secrets ruin their shot at love?

Violet Taylor leads a double life. She performs in a traveling show as the mysterious Masked Marvel, a daring and commanding sharpshooter. But in real life, she holds back and allows others to lead the way. When an accident puts her arm in a sling, she has to scramble to protect the secret of her identity as the Masked Marvel. So she enlists the help of her identical twin sister, a “townie” dressmaker, to secretly swap places until her arm heals. But that means she must also take on her sister’s role as director of a children’s church program. There’s just one hitch. Her sister sweet on Pastor Carson, the program’s codirector, so Violet has to make sure not to mess anything up with him.

Pastor Carson Davis became guardian to an orphaned nine-year-old six months ago and has been struggling to build a relationship with the boy ever since. It’s to the point where he’s begun to wonder if he’s even fit to be a pastor. Could finding himself a wife who’d be a proper mother figure for his foster son be the solution?

As Violet and Carson work together on the children’s program the attraction between them grows. But awareness of her sister’s feelings and guilt over her deception hold Violet back.
Little does she know that Carson is harboring secrets of his own…

ORDER LINK