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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37302
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37302
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

There is a very simple rule here: don't describe emotions; create them. You are creating an experience for the reader. If you describe emotions, you are creating a clinical experience, one that is detached from what is happening. But if people want a clinical experience, they usually turn to non-fiction. They turn to fiction for a visceral experience, a felt experience.

To create an emotional response in a felt experience, you have to set things up so that when the event happens, the reader feels the emotion immediately, just because the event happens, and they know how the characters involved feel as well, based on everything they already know about them, just because the event happens, and not because of any emotion you tell them about at the time.

This is generally done by showing us a previous incident of less consequence which establishes how the character feels and reacts to things so that when the big incident occurs, we know how they must feel because we know how they reacted to a smaller incident in the past, and because we know what their emotions must be in that moment, we feel them too, without having to be told.

You can't whip up an emotional response on the spot. You can't force the reader to feel anything just be force of words. You can't convince the reader that the character feels something just be telling us that they do. You have to use storytelling techniques to ensure that when a particular event happens the reader already knows what the character feels and feels it themselves.

This does not mean that you never describe emotions. We observe the emotions of others all the time without being particularly moved by them ourselves. Sometimes the description of other emotions is incidental to setting up the big emotional moments that are key to the story. But the big emotions have to be set up and triggered, not described.

Original score: 5