This blog post includes affiliate links to help you support me. It means that if you buy something through my link, the price is no different for you but I will receive a small commission 🙂 You can read more about affiliate links here.
Some types of stories rely on character feelings more than others but no story should be written completely without your characters expressing feelings in some way.
Okay, maybe you’re writing about robots with no feelings, but characters should always react to everything that happens and some of that reaction should include feelings as well unless your audience is also robots with no feelings. Reactions that are nothing but intellectualised thoughts and physical action are 100% unrealistic no matter how rational you think you are!
So if you’d like to hone your character feeling writing skills, read this post for how to do it right. Stick around until the end to get writing exercises that help you apply everything you learn!
RELATED: How to describe character appearance – Writing character flaws – The Ultimate Character Workbook (Etsy)
Why feelings matter
There are always people who think feelings are irrelevant or that there’s no place for them in a logical society, and some of those people even want to write books to reflect that belief. The fact is, though, that you can’t escape feelings. Ask any psychologist who hasn’t got their degree from a cereal box.
Anyway, I digress. Why do feelings matter in a story? Well, we all have them, and seeing another person’s feelings helps us understand that persons point of view and what really is going on. They’re a part of the human experience, even when fictional. And because they’re omnipresent in our real lives, it would be quite odd if they weren’t there in a story.
Reading stories is, to some degree, roleplay and wish-fulfilment. We agree to become those people while we read, and when they cry, we cry. When they’re excited, we’re excited. Fiction is a safe place to try out different feelings and we get to see what it would be like if different things, good or bad, would happen to us. Feelings are an important part of that.
What are feelings, anyway?
When we talk about “feelings” and “writing”, people can sometimes jump to the conclusion that we’re specifically talking about love and romance. Feelings are sappy, you see, and don’t have a place in serious novels.
That is just silly. All feelings are feelings, not just the goopy, sappy and weepy ones. Anger? A feeling. Fear? Also feeling. Ennui? Yes, that’s also a feeling. Just ask Inside Out 2.
Emotions vs feelings
While writing this post, I remembered that apparently feelings and emotions are two slightly different things. In my language, Finnish, we use the same word for both things, so that’s probably why I keep forgetting this distinction.
My brief Google search tells me that emotions are more unconscious and physical, while feelings are conscious interpretations of these emotions. To be honest, I don’t really understand, because don’t you feel your emotions anyway, and if you can name an emotion, doesn’t it then become verbal and intellectualised?? Maybe I just have too many feelings emotions to understand this concept.
I really wanted to find a GIF of Edith from Downton Abbey saying “I don’t understand” (IYKYK) but had to settle for the lovely dowager instead:
For the purposes of this post, I’ll be using both of these words randomly and interchangeably. Sorry about that. I’m not a psychologist. I think people in general don’t always know the difference anyway, and more importantly for me, people will be using both words when looking for information and I need to help them find it even if it means sometimes using words inaccurately. Again, sorry. I just work here.
Why you can’t just say what a character feels
Remember that roleplaying and wish-fulfilment I mentioned earlier? And what about really getting immersed in a story? A reader won’t be able to do any of that if you simply state what your character feels. That doesn’t feel like anything. Check this out:
“I’m angry that you did that,” he said.
What did that make you feel? Probably not much. Are you convinced that this person is angry, or is there a possibility they’re something else? Maybe they’re saying it sarcastically. Maybe they’re actually sad. We’ll never know. Compare to this:
“Why the fuck would you do that?” he said and slammed the door.
To be honest I felt a little tense just writing that and I think you can agree that conveys the feeling of anger a lot better. And yet, you can’t see the word angry anywhere, or any other adjective, actually. The dialogue alone could convey sadness, too, but the action of slamming a door is a pretty reliable sign of anger.
When you’re writing your first draft, it’s more than fine to just tell what your characters are feeling, but make sure to fix it in later drafts.
Yes, it’s “show, don’t tell”
Once again, it’s about showing rather than telling. When it comes to writing feelings, it’s often helpful to ask yourself: how do you know? If they’re angry, happy or sad, how do you know this? How do your characters demonstrate their feelings? That’s all it’s about, nothing more complicated than that.
If you’re not great at understanding body language or other people’s feelings, it can be more difficult to write feelings in a way that your readers will understand them and connect to them. Even if you don’t struggle with these things, it’s easy to get stuck to using the same few gestures, phrases and body sensations. Don’t have your characters do nothing but quirk their eyebrows and have sweaty hands.
I’ve found that 1000 Character Reactions From Head To Toe and The Emotion Thesaurus are extremely useful for those times when you find yourself using the same expressions over and over. There’s also this thesaurus of facial expressions that I’m looking forward to using in the future but that I haven’t started reading yet.
Feelings are rarely “pure”
I’ve mentioned anger, sadness and happiness in this post, but in real life, feelings are rarely that simple. We don’t often have “pure” feelings with zero undercurrents of other feelings. Feelings are also more complicated than “negative” or “positive” feelings.
I love this Wikipedia article on emotion classifications because it gives you so many ways to look at emotions and what they’re directed at. This can be immensely helpful when trying to accurately portray what’s going on below the surface of your characters.
If you only have your characters experience the basic emotions (fear, surprise, disgust, happiness and sadness), your characters won’t appear realistic and they definitely won’t be very interesting or relatable.
Primary and secondary emotions
Writing 21st Century Fiction includes some good exercises for revealing the secondary emotions in your story and encourages you to use them instead of the primary emotion whenever you can. Try it out! What do you think is behind the primary emotion?
For example, if someone is angry, dig deeper into why they’re feeling that way. Are they disappointed because they’ve been let down again, or ashamed because they feel partially responsible? Are they actually worried for the future or overwhelmed by something?
A simply happy character is not particularly interesting. Are they also hopeful for the future or proud that they’ve achieved something? Are they feeling loved and adored? Or maybe they’re gleeful out of spite? All these make a lot more complex and realistic characters.
Don’t go for the obvious
Besides using more than just the surface feeling, you don’t want to always go for the obvious. Obvious writing can easily turn into boring writing.
Let’s say your character just won a million euros. They should be happy, right? Let’s mix things up! Make this character worried or ashamed instead. Or maybe your character gets called a dumb girl and instead of being digusted and angry, she is disgusted and… a little aroused? Hey, no kink-shaming here.
You can’t always go the complete opposite way with your character emotions, of course, but use those secondary emotions to add an extra layer, maybe something that the character would be ashamed to reveal. Maybe they’re sad, but also not surprised. If the child had been ill all his life, maybe his death is also a relief for the parent. That isn’t something that a parent would be eager to admit but it happens anyway.
Research can help you write better character feelings
If you don’t know what people might feel in situations that you haven’t personally experienced, you might want to do some research.
Read memoirs, watch documentaries where people talk about gruesome things they’ve gone through, browse Reddit threads, watch TikTok storytimes where people overshare their personal drama. All of it can be good research and show you different ways of reacting to unusual life experiences.
Showing feeling with action
Let’s finally get into how to write these feelings and emotions in your stories, starting from action.
When I talk about action, I obviously don’t mean explosions and gunshots. It’s anything that your characters physically do, be it raising their eyebrows or shrugging. (That’s basically all that my first-draft characters do, in addition to looking at each other and turning to look at each other, and maybe occasionally looking away, too.)
What are angry actions, for example? Could be grinding your teeth, slamming things, stomping, huffing and growling. The loudness of the actions usually depends on how successfully a person is hiding that feeling. We can’t all yell and scream when we’re mad, sometimes we might cry and withdraw instead.
Try to avoid cliches and repetitive expressions
Although eyebrows are very expressive, having your character react to everything by raising or furrowing their brow has become almost a joke. Putting a fist through a wall in a bout of anger can also be quite a tired image of an angry person and makes one wonder about the structural integrity of the buildings in your story.
I’m not saying you can’t mention a character’s eyebrow movements ever, but remember to have variety. Many gestures on their own also don’t say much, for example, what does drawing a sharp breath mean? Not much, so don’t rely on it. Add other actions and other ways to show your character’s emotions.
How dialogue can show character feeling
When we talk about your characters showing their feelings through dialogue, I don’t mean that they should be stating “I’m so mad at you” or “that makes me sad”. Using the actual feeling words should be used strictly for your characters communicating with each other, not the writer communicating with the reader. Yes, I’m going to explain what that means, don’t worry.
Real people aren’t often as in touch with their emotions as they’d like to think. Even when they are, they might not want to be honest about them. That’s why it’s not really realistic having your characters tell each other how they feel all the time, and it’s definitely not interesting to your readers. Now, if they’re lying or obviously ignorant of their own feelings, dialogue is a great place to show that.
So how, exactly, should you show feelings through dialogue if not by having the character state how they’re feelings? Let’s consider sadness this time.
“I’m so sad that you’re leaving.”
That didn’t sound very sad, did it? Perhaps one of these examples would be better:
“What am I supposed to do without you?”
“No, it’s fine. I’m used to being on my own. Don’t you worry about me.”
“What do you mean you’re leaving? We were supposed to spend my birthday together.”
In my opinion, all those options would elicit more sadness in a reader, and you might even see some despair, defiance and disappointment in there as well. Isn’t that a lot more effective than just having your character say they’re sad?
Consider this example:
“Yes, I’m happy.”
Is that a character telling other characters AND your readers that they’re happy? Hmm. Let’s expand the scene a little.
“So you’re happy now that you finally got your way, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’m happy,” she said and stuffed the tear-soaked tissue deeper into her jean pocket. “Delirious, even.”
That’s already a whole different thing, isn’t it? What about this:
“No, I’m happy.”
Okay, surely this character is lying, right? But what if this happened instead:
“Your parents just died, it’s normal to cry and feel sad, it’s okay.”
“No, I’m happy, you idiot. I’m finally free!” She wiped her nose for the last time and took him into her arms for a victory dance.
So as you can see, expressing feelings in dialogue is more than your characters telling how they feel, and when they do use “feeling words”, it should usually be more complex than just saying how they feel.
Avoid feelings in dialogue tags
I’ve noticed that dialogue tags are a commonly discussed topic on the internet and there are a lot of beginner writers who have completely misunderstood the issue. I don’t know who came up with “said is dead” but they really need a swift kick on the butt.
Your dialogue tags are not boring and you don’t need to google “synonyms for said” and definitely not “synonyms for said angrily”. Using fancier or “better” words in dialogue tags is not the answer – you need to learn to convey information differently. Why? because it works better. Which one of these two exmples sounds more angry:
1) “I didn’t want this job anyway,” he said angrily.
2) “I didn’t want this job anyway,” he said and slammed his mug on the table, making the woman from HR take a step back.
In general, manner adverbs are best avoided whenever you want your readers to really see something, but when you’re trying to convey character feelings to your readers, you should always choose something else rather than have these -ly words in dialogue tags.
What feelings feel like inside the character’s body
Feelings and emotions aren’t just concepts that you can talk about, they’re also physical bodily feelings. If you’re writing from a point of view where you have access to a character’s bodily feelings, you should definitely use them.
What does excitement feel in the body? Is it heart pounding and butterflies in your stomach? Ants in your pants? Other insects somewhere else? (It’s more likely than you think. Sorry.) Sadness isn’t just your eyes watering, how else does it feel? Does your breath feel short and stomach like stone? Are your limbs weak and face numb? Explore all options.
Here are some examples:
My hands were sweating as I took the money from him, certain that my breakfast might make a comeback any moment now.
The thought of seeing him made my chest ache and put a brick on the bottom of my stomach.
The butterflies in my stomach were flying free and I was dizzy with excitement.
Something you may see missing there is the word “feel”, and that’s not by accident. You don’t need to say your hands feel sweaty if they ARE sweaty, and generally feelings are felt and don’t need that word there explaining it. Does your character feel sad, or are they sad? Does she feel tired, or is she tired? Be accurate and specific.
Of course, sometimes your characters do only feel something. Maybe she felt like she was going to throw up, but then didn’t. Sometimes you can feel like you’re going to die, but you won’t.
As with anything else, try not to get stuck using the same expressions over and over, and maybe refrain from referring to watery bowels more than once per series.
Paint a picture, set a scene
As the writer, you don’t have to settle for the immediacy of your character when conveying different feelings to your readers. You can paint an entire picture to show what your character really is feeling. You can use metaphors, the setting or just specific word choices. Let’s look at what this means!
The hinges groaned as she shut the door behind her, leaving her mother at the rickety old table. Dust on the unkempt yard stained her once white sneakers that had cost more than her parents made in a month. She raised a weak arm to hail a taxi and never looked back.
Sadness, regret, determination to move on anyway… A lot of difficult feelings in a few sentences. Let’s try our hand at a happier scene:
The raindrops played a song on the tent canvas while Nelly cleaned the leaves off her cup full of round, shiny berries. Her fingers were stained blue like an artist painting a vast, cloudless sky, and she popped a handful of berries into her mouth and let the sweet juice stain her lips, too.
I think satisfaction is the primary feeling I get from this passage, perhaps even confidence and pride. You may notice that although there were multiple adjectives in this example, they all described concrete things and didn’t refer to any of the feelings that I wanted to show.
Whether you liked these examples or not, I’m sure you now know exactly what I mean by painting a picture. Set the scene right in your mind and let your readers see it, too. Try to refrain from using tired and over-used images, though, like rain when your characters are sad, because that can take away from the effect you’re trying to make.
Other character’s reactions can also reveal feelings
Your characters are, hopefully, not just floating alone in a vacuum. They interact with other people, too. Whether we’re talking about your POV character’s feelings or someone else’s, another person’s reaction can be helpful in showing what is being felt.
She flinched when I told her to leave me alone.
The POV character here is probably angry, don’t you think? We might need more context to get the full picture, but nobody flinches out of delight, I think. Let’s try a different approach:
“Leave me alone,” I said, but she reached out and squeezed my shoulder anyway.
What does squeezing someone’s shoulder usually mean? Comfort and reassurance, I’d say, so the POV character probably is sad or perhaps sorely disappointed.
Let’s try another example:
His face went red and I wanted to tell him it was okay to cry.
His face went red and I kept unbuttoning my shirt.
In both examples the other character’s face goes red, but the way your POV character reacts to it shows that there are different feelings in the mix here. Sure, the reddening face probably shows some level of embarrassment (either for yourself or because of another person’s actions) but there’s very different secondary feelings going on as well.
Other characters’ dialogue also counts here. What’s the POV character feeling here?
I poured myself a cup of coffee.
“Gosh, you look exhausted,” my mother said. “Were you crying all night again?”
Tired and sad, perhaps? Let’s try it differently:
I poured myself a cup of coffee.
“Well, someone’s had a good night,” my roommate teased. “I didn’t hear you come back home until four this morning.”
I mean, we can practically see the smirk on the POV character’s face as she’s pouring the coffee, and yet we’re not actually getting any descriptions of her or her face.
If you’re struggling with this, don’t be afraid to ask other people how they’d react in different situations to different bursts of emotion, and also dig into your own experiences.
Writing exercises for showing different character emotions and feelings
Applying all this to your writing is easier when you have some practice, and I’m a big fan of putting writing tips to good use instead of just storing that information in your fantastic, glittery brain. So let’s try some writing exercises before I let you go.
First, I’m going to give you a quick scene with nothing but dialogue, and you need to add the dialogue tags, action tags, inner monologue and narration that show specific emotions. You can choose what POV and tense to use.
“I don’t know about that.”
“It’s totally obvious to me. We should do it.”
“But what if…”
“You always think too much.”
“Be quiet.”
“What?”
“Someone can hear us.”
After you’ve done that once, try again with different feelings and/or emotions.
For your next exercise, choose a big feeling and have your character display this feeling at a supermarket, surrounded by strangers. Add three secondary emotions that are behind that feeling and make sure your readers catch them, too, without you pointing them out.
Then, take two characters who are having a very emotional moment at candlelight. Write it with no dialogue at all.
Lastly, write three different scenes. One where your character gets struck by lightning, one where they get proposed by the prince and one were they receive a huge birthday present. Have your character react and feel opposite things than what you might expect. Utilise all ways of showing character emotions.
If you liked these writing exercises, you can find more here.
Using character emotions in your own writing
Now you’ve hopefully learned more about character feelings and emotions than you knew before reading this post.
Although there are different ways of showing your character emotions to readers, you don’t need to use every method for every feeling. Just have them ready in your toolbelt and mix them up. Most importantly, don’t reach for the most used emotions and expressions – that’s lazy and tired writing that won’t help your readers connect to your story.
With more life experience comes more ways of expressing and understanding human emotions. If you want to add more depth to your stories, draw from your own experiences, talk to other people about theirs, become an inspector of different situations and absolutely overanalyse everything you see happen around you. It’s going to make your writing more interesting.
Protagonist Crafts is a blog about writing fiction, written by a published author and creative writing teacher. You can find more writing tips and inspiration in the blog and you can get the best author tools at Writer Lifestyle on Etsy.
