How do you show emotion without resorting to purple prose or melodramatic dialogue? For a subtle approach, take a look at the character’s surroundings and how you can use those to enhance the overall mood. Remember, if you’re telling a story from a first or third person point of view, you are almost obligated to slant your depictions by what that character sees–and if that character is in a funk, the most beautiful thing in the world will look grim and lifeless.
So someone who’s happy might see a moment in time thusly (the usual caveat, that this is just a rough draft by way of example, applies):
The wood of the park bench warmed Eileen’s back; sunlight reflecting from the lake dazzled her vision. She could feel her winter-taut muscles relaxing as she tossed bread to the eager ducks and pigeons, and couldn’t help smiling at the bicyclists zooming by. What was their hurry?
John sat down next to her, his baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. He hunched back into the bench, his large feet planted wide and solidly; she found herself moving over a few inches without even thinking about it. John always seemed to take up four times as much space as his physical body ought to require–especially, like now, when he was in a bad mood.
He glared at the bread in her hand, at the ducks, at the bicyclists, and didn’t say anything. She kept on feeding the birds, placidly using up the entire bag of leftover bread ends from the bakery where she and John both worked–he baking, she selling. When the bag was empty, she rolled it into a tight ball and stuffed it into her jeans pocket.
“What’s up?” she said then, leaning back and squinting out at the dance of light on water; sunlight warm on her shoulders and face. Somewhere nearby, children laughed and squealed, dogs yapped after thrown balls and frisbees, and bicyclist bells tinged announcement of their passing presence. Everything seemed to be in motion, everything seemed to glow and glitter and ring. Eileen shut her eyes, vaguely overwhelmed by it all.
“As if you don’t know,” John said. “I got fired today.”
Meanwhile, John the grump might see it this way:
The bright sunlight made John’s ferocious headache even worse. He hadn’t slept enough last night; he never did. He hadn’t slept well since the night he’d lost Anna. He walked through the park, knowing where he’d find Eileen–feeding those stupid ducks with the leftovers from the bakery, like always.
A ping came from behind him; he stepped aside reflexively, then wished he hadn’t; the bicyclist went by with a cheery wave and “Thanks!”
John stepped back onto the path, yanking the brim of his baseball cap down further to shield his eyes. Something hard and round bounced off his right shoulder a moment later, followed by a startled cry of “Hey, sorry, mister!” and the yapping of an enthusiastic mutt as it dashed to retrieve the badly thrown tennis ball. He sent an unforgiving glower at the kid and kept going, barely spotting the cracked spot in the path in time. Yeah, a twisted ankle would just about set this day to perfection.
He could see Eileen ahead, sitting on her favorite, nausea-green bench; tossing chunks of the bread he’d spent all damn week baking, but which she hadn’t been able to sell, to a bunch of scroungy, rank, diseased birds. His headache sharpened further at the sight, and by the time he sat down on the bench beside her, he was ready to feed her to the damn ducks.
She ignored him. She kept feeding those birds, grinning at the bicyclists streaking by, at the birds flapping and crapping all over the path, at the kids screeching and wailing, at those stupid dogs howling and barking. Like everything was just fine. Like she didn’t know Janice had fired him. Goddamn lying cow.
Sometimes, taking a moment in your story and writing it as seen through the eyes of another character can give you some useful information. In this case, John clearly has issues–whatever happened to this Anna person, for one–and is probably far more broke than Eileen suspects. He’s also paranoid and vengeful, apt to blame other people for his problems. If I were to continue with this as a story, I’d be finding opportunities for John to sabotage Anna and Janice in revenge for his being unfairly–as he sees it–fired. I’d rather use Eileen as a main character, because John is just a sour pill, and those are always a little on the depressing side to write. But seeing the world through his eyes for just a few paragraphs gave me lots of ideas for how to use this guy to complicate Eileen’s life.
That aside, though, the emotional tone of each scene is based around how each character perceived their surroundings: happy dogs or irritating mutts, cheerful kids or wailing little snotbags. Eileen loves the sunlight; John hates it.
Some writers avoid setting almost completely, beyond the vaguest sketch of suggestions. Some go on for paragraphs about the way the world looks and what’s going on around the character. I like the middle approach–present information, but route it through the character’s vision, tie it into their thoughts and reactions, make it relevant to the moment.
How do your characters react to their setting? Are they even aware of it? How do they affect their setting, how does their setting affect them? What is your style, your voice–because there is no “wrong” or “right” way on this particular issue, just what speaks most strongly to you as a writer.
Until next post–believe in yourself and in your writing, but at the same time, try lots of new approaches to see if there’s anything else that might just work better!
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