Three ways to inject emotion words into your writing

Oct. 28

Written By Laura MacAulay

* Part 2 of How to write point-of-view characters’ emotions *

Suspicious. Overjoyed. Dazed.

Emotion words like these fast-track readers to a point-of-view character’s psychological state.

Unnerved.

Bam! There it is. Efficient and economical. Like an arrow to the heart.

But not all writers take full advantage of powerful words like these. Some don’t want to be too obvious about what their character’s feeling—and that’s a wise instinct! But if handled with finesse, emotion words and subtlety can go hand in hand. Take it from celebrated wordsmith Margaret Atwood:

And I don’t want her to feel frightened, to feel the fear that is now tightening my muscles, tensing my spine, pulling me so taut that I’m certain I would break if touched.
—The Handmaid’s Tale

I don’t know about you, but as I read that sentence, I’m practically gritting my teeth in anticipation of what’s coming next. As this visceral line demonstrates, there’s no reason to banish emotion words from your manuscript. If you shy away from using emotion words or want to expand your range of techniques to incorporate them in your writing, this post is for you.

I’ll be sharing three strategies to work emotion words into your story, from simple to sophisticated:

Level 1: On their own
Level 2: Partnered up with dialogue, thoughts, and actions
Level 3: As physical sensations

Level 1: State the emotion straight-up

Yes, successful novelists can and do include plain-and-simple statements of the POV character’s feelings every once in a while. Take for instance:

She’s scared again, now, but she doesn’t know what she’s scared of. —Margaret Laurence, The Diviners
I’m really beginning to panic. —Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife
This question—this naivete—somehow irritates me. —Rajesh Parameswaran, I Am an Executioner
But as he continued to punch, my fear vanished. I felt only astonishment at his strength and energy. —Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
The thought of Benjen Stark saddened him; his uncle was still missing. —George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

Elegantly concise sentences like these do the job of communicating what the character is feeling without needless fluff. Opt for this type of sentence when you don’t want to dwell too long on the emotion and get on with the action. Use them to preface an action or line of dialogue to colour the tone of their behaviour. Or slip them in between fancier, sprawling sentences to add variety to the rhythm of your prose. Just make sure you aren’t sticking with this Level 1 type of sentence at every juncture or you’re sure to bore your readers.

Here are basic building blocks for Level 1-style expressions of emotion. Feel free to drop them into your story at will.

Essential verbs

felt, was, got, grew, became, turned

Essential sentence structures

She felt angry / She was feeling angry
She started to feel angry / She started feeling angry / She was starting to feel angry
She began to feel angry / She began feeling angry / She was beginning to feel angry
She was angry
She got angry / She was getting angry
She grew angry / She was growing angry
She became angry / She was becoming angry
It made her angry / It angered her

Level 2: Attach the emotion to dialogue, thoughts, and actions

In conjunction with dialogue is where we most often see emotion words. These help us interpret the nuances of what the character is saying and amplify the intensity of feeling behind them. Try trimming out the emotion words from the lines below: is the dialogue alone sufficient to convey the characters’ feelings, or do the emotion words paint a fuller picture of what they’re going through?

No, we won’t, Frink thought bitterly. —Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle
“Just a mild headache,” I said in a tiny terrified voice. —Barry Hughart, Bridge of Birds
“You’re finished?” Stanley asked enviously. —Louis Sachar, Holes
“But dawn is not for another nine hours!” exclaimed Stephen in horror. —Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
“Then,” I cried, half desperate, “grant me at least a new servitude!” —Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

Of course, it wouldn’t be wise to attach an emotion word to every single line of dialogue. Most often, the dialogue by itself already does a good job of showing how the character feels; tacking on an emotion word would be redundant or heavy-handed. Also avoid using emotion words in several lines of dialogue in a row, or your writing will quickly start looking formulaic.

You can build off any of the following basic structures to attach emotion words to dialogue and thoughts. Feel free to play around with the order of the words and move the emotion word to the beginning, middle, or end of your sentence.

Essential sentence structures

“So this is good writing?” she said skeptically.
“So this is good writing?” she said with skepticism.
“So this is good writing?” she said, skeptical.

Another common spot to find emotion words is alongside a POV character’s actions. The most ordinary of gestures—sitting down, picking up an object, watching the scenery—gain magnitude when feelings are layered into them. Readers learn not only what the character is doing, but how they are doing it and why it matters to them. Try leaving out the emotion words from the quotes below. Can you picture the character’s movements just as clearly? Do you still get an idea of how they’re feeling?

Winston took up his glass with a certain eagerness. Wine was a thing he had read and dreamed about. —George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
Startled, I leap to my feet and scramble around for a towel. —Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore (199)
That evening, after dinner, Jung sat desolate at his desk beneath the lamplight, pondering the events of the day. —Timothy Findley, Pilgrim
Cautiously, he walked out onto the bridge and went to stand beside her at the edge. —Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
It was with a sense of loss, even deprivation and melancholy, that he had watched the clifftop towns drift past. Each one unknown to him. —Mordecai Richler, St. Urbain’s Horsemen

A caveat: not every gesture requires a marker of emotion. Trivial actions don’t need to be qualified. A detailed physical description of an action may speak for itself. Or the character’s feelings may be expressed through other avenues like thoughts, dialogue, or inner sensations. What’s important is to give the reader some form of inroad to the character’s mental state in emotionally charged situations.

Treat the following sentence structures as templates, supplying your own character, emotion, and action, and embroidering details to make them your own.

Essential sentence structures

Angry, he shoved away his latest draft.
Feeling angry, he shoved away his latest draft.
He angrily shoved away his latest draft.
He shoved away his latest draft in anger.
With anger, he shoved away his latest draft.

Level 3: Describe the emotion as a physical sensation

This is where it gets a little more complicated... but also wonderfully creative!

Emotions aren’t just intangible mental states—they’re concrete physical sensations that manifest in the body. Think of the heat that floods your face when you’re nervous, the sinking feeling in your gut that comes with disappointment, the tightness in your chest when you’re angry, or the light, sparkling energy that fizzes through your limbs when you’re having a blast. These are universal human experiences that any reader will recognize in a fictional character. If you’re able to pinpoint the inner sensations that accompany your characters’ emotions, readers will find them relatable and realistic.

To get started in your exploration, take a look at common vocabulary and sentence structures used by great writers in every genre to express emotions as physical sensations.

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A) Parts of the body where characters feel emotions

In literature as in life, the throat, chest and stomach are common sites for emotions to materialize; so are the spine and head; and more generally, a person’s insides, their core, their entire being. Here are a few examples of best-selling authors putting this phenomenon to good use:

His body was throbbing with the excitement of having spoken up and being heard by Jenna. —Jonathan Franzen, Freedom
His head was in a whirl of hope and wonder. It seemed that the ring he had was a magic ring: it made you invisible! —J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
Charles Wallace felt a ripple of cold move along his spine. —Madeleine L’Engle, A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Feel free to borrow the following common phrases as you please, or use them as springboards to come up with your own:

General

inside her, within her, through her
her insides
deep down, deep inside her, deep within her
in her being, in the depths of her being
at her core, at her very core, at the core of her being

The whole body

through her body, in her body, her whole body, her entire body
beneath her flesh, under her skin, across every inch of her skin
every part of her, every pore of her body
from head to toe, from end to end
her nerves, her every nerve
her senses

The throat

in her throat, in her windpipe, at the back of her throat, at the base of her throat

The chest

in her chest, within her chest, in the centre of her chest, deep within her chest
in her heart, within her heart, deep within her heart
in her ribcage, within her ribcage, behind her ribs, behind her breastbone

The stomach

in her stomach, in the pit of her stomach
in her belly
in her gut

The veins

in her veins, through her veins
in her blood

The spine and bones

up/down/through her spine
up/down her backbone
up/down her back
at the back of her neck
in her bones
all the way down to the bone
in the marrow of her bones
in her marrow

The head

in her head
in her mind, in the depths of her mind
in her brain
at her temples

The arms and legs

to her extremities
through her limbs
right to her fingertips
down to her toes

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B) Expressing emotions through imagery

Time to call upon your powers of imagination! A feeling might manifest as physical tension, heat or cold, heaviness or lightness, squeezing or shaking sensations, and so on. By comparing to other things that are tense, hot, cold, heavy, or light, things that squeeze or shake, you tap into the reader’s five senses and dial up their own emotional response to the characters. Compare “He feels joyful” to “He feels joy bloom in his chest”: which line feels more vivid to you?

Visualize an emotion, say, dread, as a physical force or substance passing through your character’s body. Is it most like water, blood, poison, light, wind, or another element? Or is it most like an object—a stone, a snake, a cloth, a knife? Does it have a texture, a temperature, a sound, a taste? Does it come in a rush or does it slowly seep in, then drain away? Does it move in a trickle, a pulse, a sudden flash, a storm? Does it inch up the character’s throat, squeeze their chest, thrum through their veins, shiver down their spine? What kind of substance is moving through your character, and how strong is that current of feeling?

Let’s look at how three renowned writers use the image of a wire to describe the emotions of fear and excitement, beginning with the quote from the top of this post:

And I don’t want her to feel frightened, to feel the fear that is now tightening my muscles, tensing my spine, pulling me so taut that I’m certain I would break if touched. —Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
Every step she took, she felt as if there were a wire that lit up, a bright message travelling from her heels to the top of her skull. —Alice Munro, “What Is Remembered”
I was held tight, wound round with wire, I couldn’t breathe, and I had to run. —Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Notice the words that these authors used to help us feel the sensation of a wire: tightening, tensing, pulling, taut, break, lit up, bright, travelling, tight, wound round.

To build up an image of your own, select nouns, verbs, and/or adjectives that are associated with the substance you have in mind. For instance, to express misery as a cloud, you could use nouns like cloud, fog, haze; verbs like settle, roll, dissipate; adjectives like heavy, murky, cold:

A haze of misery settles over her heart.
Misery, murky and cold, rolls through her insides.
She feels her misery starting to dissipate.

You can make evocative comparisons using like, as, as if/as though:

Misery settles over her like a heavy cloud.
Misery, murky as fog, rolls through her insides.
Her misery dissipates as if it were fog under the morning sun.

You can also choose to leave off the emotion word (in this case, misery) if readers will be able to intuit what the emotion is based on the image and surrounding context:

A heavy fog settles over her heart.
Something murky and cold rolls through her insides.
She feels the heaviness within her start to dissipate.

Two tips to keep in mind when you’re experimenting with imagery:

Match the image to your character, setting, and mood

Consider your POV character’s identity and personality in choosing your imagery. If they’re a computer nerd, tech metaphors will make sense to them. If they’re a river goddess, water and nature imagery will suit them best. And if your character has a sarcastic personality, imbue their imagery with sarcasm.

Also take setting into account. If the scene takes place at a high school, you might make school-related comparisons. If the action is happening during a sunset, draw on the qualities of that sunset to express your character’s feelings. If it’s chilly outside, think of how you might infuse the temperature into your protagonist’s mental state.

Finally, keep the overall mood of the scene in mind. If the scene is high in tension and suspense, choose imagery that will build up pressure. If the mood is light and playful, whimsical images will be more appropriate.

The tighter connections you make between your imagery and your story’s POV character, setting, and mood, the more powerful an effect the image will have on the reader.

Aim for brevity

Imagery can take a long sentence or two to describe, or it can be as succinct as a single word. Keep in mind that lengthy explanations risk becoming tedious or slowing down the pacing of the story. Bestselling authors are skilled at crafting quick flashes of imagery that are free of superfluous words. If your book has a gentle, meandering pace or features a sensitive, empathetic protagonist, your descriptions might be more elaborate. If your book has a rapid-fire pace or a stoic narrator, the briefest possible images are your best bet.

In the following examples, eighteen words are trimmed to ten, then to four. Both are valid options. Which one do you prefer? If you were to use this image in your story, how many words would you choose?

She feels a thick, heavy cloud of misery settle over her heart like fog on a misty morning.
She feels a thick, heavy cloud of misery settles over her heart like fog on a misty morning.

Want more examples of imagery and useful vocabulary you can apply to your own writing? Read on for the most common emotional imagery in fiction: water, fire, pain, electricity, and weight. You are welcome to borrow any vocabulary you like from these lists, or leap off them into images of your own creation. The possibilities are endless. Give yourself permission to experiment.

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Emotions as general physical sensations

Nouns: a feeling of (emotion), a sense, a sensation, a shiver, a flush…
Verbs: (emotion) came over her, ran through her, rose within her, stirred inside her, faded…
Adjectives: sudden, vague, slight, strong, cool…