Comments on How to show powerful emotion in a character trying to hide it?
Parent
How to show powerful emotion in a character trying to hide it?
This question deals with showing the emotions of characters when those characters are actively trying to hide their emotions. If the emotion is something subtle, like apprehension or annoyance, you can easily convey the emotion through things like body language and the way the character speaks, or the things they do. They realize they're breathing quickly, they glance nervously around corners, they clench their fists, or they storm through doors. The character might not even be aware that they are emoting.
Little hints like this work for subtle emotions. But they do not work as well for powerful emotions. Ramp those same two emotions up to, say, terror and rage, and simply showing quick breathing or a clenched fist isn't going to get the message across to the reader. There must be a larger hint, a more obvious display of the emotion, for the reader to get just how powerful it is. There has to be a moment where the character's emotions break through, if only for a moment, and he really shows them (running in terror, yelling in rage, etc.).
The problem comes when the character in question is actively trying to quell or hide that emotion. You can get away with subtle hints, because the character might not realize he's emoting. But to show more powerful emotions, you need more obvious hints, and it's hard to believe that the character will emote that way and not realize it. He will stop himself before he starts.
Here's an example:
The war between the vampires and the elves has raged for many years. Our hero has seen first hand the suffering the vampires are capable of inflicting, and has felt loss at their hands. Young and head-strong, he is consumed with rage towards them. Our hero joins the war, and throws himself into every conflict against the vampires. His father, fearing for his safety, joins his platoon, and watches him closely. Then one day, our hero, blind with his rage and thirst for revenge, throws himself against several elite vampires. Alone and outnumbered, he quickly realizes his mistake, but it's too late. At the last moment, his father comes out of nowhere and slays the vampires, but takes the deathblow intended for his son. As he dies in his son's arms, he is at peace, telling our hero that he 'kept him safe'. Now realizing what his endless rage against the vampires has wrought, our hero swears to never let it blind him again. He returns home to his family, but his rage follows him, refusing to be quenched.
In this example, the hero feels an undying rage towards the vampires, but at the same time, he's now afraid of what that rage might cause, and makes every attempt to quell or ignore it.
I might be able to show simple hints, like a clenched fist or storming out of the door, but those won't convey the vast hatred this character feels, and the character certainly won't allow himself to give the reader any more hints than that.
Question: How can I show powerful emotion in a character who is actively trying to hide that same emotion?
Post
While emotions do show on the face and in the movement of the body, those are not the major ways that we judge people's emotions in real life. In particular, they are not the principle means by which we judge the intensity of the emotion. Different people, after all, vary hugely in how expressive they are of their emotions. Some are hugely demonstrative for no reason at all. Other are stoic through the direst of events.
We judge emotion and the intensity of emotion chiefly by our knowledge of the history of the person up to the moment that the emotional trigger occurs. We expect that a person will have an emotional reaction based on our knowledge of what has happened to them, what we know them to be hoping for.
If we know that someone has been waiting for an acceptance letter from Harvard, having spent every waking moment preparing and studying for the last ten years of their live, then if we see them go through the mail and pause on one envelope, our hearts immediately go into our mouths, and if we see them tear open the letter and read and then their face falls, we feel devastated. We know they are just heartbroken inside, even if the make little or no outward display of emotions beyond that first signal of disappointment.
Note, though, that the intensity of our emotion is not based on the information alone. You can't just tell it in three sentences like I did above. (Which I presume did not bring a tear to your eye when you read them.) You have to follow the person, let us get to know and sympathize with them, let our hope and anticipation for their success build up. Only then will the revelation provoke the desired emotion.
And remember too, that the job of the novelist is not to show emotion, it is to create emotion. Ultimately it is the emotions that the reader feels and projects onto the character that matter. Being told that the character has an emotion, being shown physical evidence of emotions, are cold and dead things if we are not feeling the emotions ourselves.
To make the readers feel emotions, give your character a dream and crush it; give your character a lover and kill them; give your character a home and burn it to the ground. Do this and there is no need to show emotion. The reader will supply the emotion all by themselves.
What then becomes interesting in the character's reaction is not that it tells us they are having the emotion, but that it allows us to calibrate the reaction against the emotion we have already projected onto them because we are feeling it ourselves. So where we have already projected profound emotion onto the character because of what we know about their history, we now observe their mild or concealed physical reaction and go Ah! They dare not show their feelings. And that introduces a new element of tension into your story, and that is good.
0 comment threads