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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27976
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27976
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

In real life, we experience emotions ourselves and we observe them in others. Thus some emotions are observed but not felt and that is fine.

As far as felt emotions are concerned, we feel emotions in response to events. We do not feel an emotion because we are told to feel it. Felt emotion, therefore is created by the events of the story. If you want the reader to feel something when a particular event occurs, then you have to set it up properly as that they feel that emotion.

There are two ways to deal with a seen emotion. One is to describe all the symptoms of the emotion. The other is to state them as you do in your examples.

Hard core show don't tell people will tell you that you should never name them, but the problem with this is that not every emotion is worth an exhaustive description of all its symptoms. And in real life, we don't tend to stand and puzzle out someone's emotions symptom by symptom. We recognize them in a glance. Thus a blow by blow description of the symptoms of an emotion is not really true to how we read people in real life. Sometimes it is the right thing to do, particularly where we may feel an emotion in response to the emotion the character is experiencing. But often is breaks the flow of the narrative is simply not true to the instant reading of emotion that we do most of the time.

To put it another way, sometimes the right thing to say is:

> The sky began to redden behind the mountains to the east and slowly the stars faded and inky blue brightened into periwinkle as the first flash of the sun broke the horizon painting the landscape a fiery orange stabbed through with sharp shadows.

And sometimes the right thing to say is:

> At sunrise John set out for Phoenix.

It is no different for emotions. There is a time to describe in detail and a time to mention in passing. It all depends on their significance in the moment.

Original score: 7