This blog talks about how to nail your character’s emotions in your story, in other words, bring a sense of authenticity to their emotional self.
Why is this important? Why not quickly throw a character together without doing the slightest bit of research?
And why not have them act out their emotions in a way that suits you and goes well with the plot?
The simple answer is your characters need to be believable. If a reader doesn’t believe that a character would act in the way you’ve described, they’ll fail to engage with the character.
Readers want to feel engaged and connected to your characters. They want to relate to your characters on a personal level and have them evoke something in them, and they can’t do this if the characters don’t feel believable to them.
Believability is important to your story too, as it helps the reader feel as if they’re there in the world you’ve created.
Even if what you’ve created is complete fantasy, there still has to be an element of feasibility and realism (this is what the Harry Potter series has achieved, making the magical seem real).
Without realism in your world, plot and characters, your story will come across as one-dimensional and flat. You’ll also lose the mood of the story due to a lack of credibility.
There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.
– Carl Jung
Overall, believable characters are important because they increase empathy and engagement in the reader, drive the plot, make the story memorable and give the story credibility through realism.
So let’s get to the basics of creating a character’s emotional self.
Humans can differ a great deal emotionally. For example, some may be demonstrative and open, whilst others may be more reserved, uncomfortable in sharing their feelings.
Emotions can also vary in strength from person to person, so in view of this it’s important to do research on your characters, even if that means constructing a very basic character sketch.
Back story
Create a brief back story on your character, a history of what led them to be who they are. Decide on basic facts such as family, geography, education, money, social standing, social life and career.
Also include past traumas if relevant, as this will have a strong bearing on their emotions.
Include people who’ve been important to them, and experiences that have made an impact.
Do research and decide on their basic personality traits. For help on this, you may want to check out my previous blogs on the Myers-Briggs personality traits system and The Big Five personality model.
After deciding on traits, it’s helpful to imagine their emotions in real-life situations and conversations and imagine how they would react emotionally in each case.
Every day reactions
Imagine your character going about their daily life. How do they deal with minor irritations and setbacks on a day to day level? What’s their baseline emotional self like?
UGLY WORD OF THE DAY: Blateration. Meaning constant, idiotic chatter.
Determine their emotional range
Decide where they sit on the emotional expressiveness spectrum. Are they comfortable with sharing how they feel and showing their emotions or is the thought of revealing how they feel horrifying to them?
Are they uncomfortable with displays of emotion and keep their feelings under wraps? Or do they fall somewhere in the middle, between these two extremes?
Out there or reserved
How expressive is the character and how do they use their body language? For example, if they heard good news, would they be reserved and just smile, or would they be more animated, making excited hand gestures while hugging/squealing?
Comfort level
How comfortable are they in opening up? Are they naturally open, or are they open only with certain people? Or are they secretive and tight-lipped?
How do they react to stimulus
How do they react to various stimulus? For example, how would they react to seeing a large spider crawling towards them? Would they calmly kill the thing or would they scream in fear?
Emotional trauma
Is there a painful event in the past that your character hasn’t fully dealt with? Is there anything that makes them uncomfortable due to trauma? Emotional wounds have the potential to completely derail one’s life.
Insecurities
Does your character harbour any insecurities from childhood?
Remember once you’ve done your research on your subject and gotten a handle on their emotional self, keep their character consistent.
Don’t have them go off and do something completely out of character without any logical explanation.
Words are animals, alive with a will of their own.
– Carl Jung
How does your character react when under threat?
Decide how your character mostly reacts when under threat. They can only react in three ways: fight, flight, or freeze.
The fight reaction is when they confront the threat head-on, preparing to battle if necessary through fighting words or actions.
The flight reaction is when they want to run from the threat, quickly looking for the nearest exit to flee.
This could also be in the form of changing the subject in a conversation or using an excuse to leave.
The freeze reaction is when they neither fight nor flee, but freeze, unable to find the right words or actions to help themselves in the situation.
Decide what response your character tends towards.
YOU MUST READ BEFORE YOU DIE: Coraline by Neil Gaman. A dark fantasy horror children’s novella published in 2002. An 11-year-old girl called Coraline moves into a new apartment with her mum and dad and becomes interested in a strange door there. When she ventures through the door, she finds a parallel universe inhabited by alternate versions of her parents, who call themselves her “Other Mother” and “Other Father”. When Coraline returns to her apartment she finds her real parents have gone missing. She decides to journey back through the door to the parallel universe to go look for them, but the evil Other Mother awaits her.
How can emotions be shown in writing?
Emotions can be shown in various ways in writing, including dialogue, subtext in dialogue (hidden meaning behind the words), vocal cues, body language, thoughts, and internal body sensations.
Vocal cues can be powerful tools to show different emotional states. Volume can be turned up to a furious shout or turned down to a husky whisper.
Tone can be trembling due to terror, cracked due to oncoming tears or be a monotone due to repressed anger.
Emotions can distort reality and blind you to the truth – like when you’re first falling in love. Full of love chemicals, you fail to see the other’s flaws – they’re dimmed or non-existent, ‘cause there’s so much good stuff going on.
The scary and dangerous thing about emotions is that they’re like fires – if left untended, they can keep growing till they become very powerful.
Then before you know it, they become hard to reverse and/or control, so make sure you reach out for help as soon as you can if your emotions start to feel like they’re getting on top of you!
Here’s what Paul Ekman, a famous American psychologist, had to say about emotions:
“Emotions can override…the more powerful fundamental motives that drive our lives: hunger, sex, and the will to survive. People will not eat if they think the only food available is disgusting. They may even die, although other people might consider that same food palatable. Emotions triumphs over the hunger drive! A person may never attempt sexual contact because of the interference of fear or disgust, or may never be able to complete a sexual act. Emotion triumphs over the sex drive! And despair can overwhelm even the will to live, motivating a suicide. Emotions triumph over the will to live! (from Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life).
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