How to Describe Emotion Without Being Melodramatic or Cliche

hey guys it's Ellen brought novel editor today I'm going to talk about how to describe emotions without being melodramatic or cliche so melodrama is when the drama is coming across is unrealistic it's sort of silly over-the-top the reader isn't really buying into this emotional expression and it's not working it's not working the way you need it to so melodrama typically happens for two reasons the first is that the writer is trying to show emotion almost exclusively in real life we tend to try to hide our emotions in most situations it's not very common maybe with our closest friends or our closest loved ones but not in general life when we're out shopping or at work would we really have these big external depictions of our emotions we typically try to stay sort of in control to sort of you know act like adults and not have meltdowns in public so when you have characters who are constantly sighing or collapsing into their hands or you maybe clapping their hands to their chest or gasping it can come across as melodramatic because it's not really the way that we express ourselves in most situations so often melodrama comes from the fact that we wouldn't be that external about our emotions so when you're relying too much on showing you can sometimes have characters that are so forthcoming with their feelings that have just come to crop is a little bit odd that it comes it comes across as unnatural now I'm not trying to tell you don't try to show emotions that showing emotions is bad obviously there's a lot of good in showing emotions that's definitely a strong way or it has the potential to be a strong way to convey emotion what happens when you're writing an entire novel is that you end up having the same emotions coming up over and over so your characters might be scared or anxious in maybe even the majority of scenes to some degree so if you're relying exclusively or almost exclusively on showing the emotions the problem is you're not going to want to repeat the same descriptions over and over again so initially your character's heart is pounding and then your character's heart is slamming against her ribs and then your character's heart is knocking against her lungs and you keep coming up with slightly different and slightly more intense descriptions of basically the same thing this often results in an increase in severity of the description so not only are you going to use a variety of descriptions but you're going to make those physical they showing element more and more severe unfortunately this typically has the effect of making the emotion seem more and more melodramatic so the second common reason for melodrama is sort of the opposite approach but it has the same problem and that's when the writer is telling the emotions almost exclusively so just like with writer to try to rely almost exclusively on showing when you rely on telling the telling will get more and more severe so first the character is scared then she's scared half to death then she's the most scared she's ever been in her life and the problem is that it's very hard to create degrees of emotions in the reader when you're just telling when you're just fading that this situation is more dramatic that this situation is scarier or or she's more embarrassed or she's sadder than before it's hard to convey those degrees to the reader through telling telling an emotion doesn't allow the reader to really experience it and really connect with it so there's often not a lot of strength to that type of description so often writers will try both methods they'll try to rely exclusively on telling they'll realize that's not working they'll probably read some things about how showing emotions is a better choice and then they'll start relying on showing exclusively but then they'll get frustrated because that's not really solving the problem either the characters are still not quite as relatable as the writer wants them to be and readers aren't really emotionally connecting to their work so here's the key most writers do not need to get better at conveying emotions it makes sense the emotional connection isn't really happening so it is logical to assume the problem is that you need to just get better at describing emotions but that's not true most writers do not need to get better at disguising emotions they need to get better at introspection what your character sinks how they interpret the world how they interpret their emotions that is a lot more important than what they feel if you pull a gun on someone pretty much everybody in the world is going to feel afraid in that situation but that doesn't tell the reader anything about your character that's not special that's not unique that's just the obvious reaction to that situation what is special and unique is what your characters think what you want to do is convey what's special about your characters reaction what is their unique flavor of scared what is their unique way of responding to that situation what do they think what parts of the situation stand out to them what are their observations those things are way more powerful than just the emotion itself what your character sinks and how they interpret things that's what makes them unique that's what helps to be reader to connect to them it doesn't really matter if you show the emotions or tell the emotions it's the introspection that will make the writing work if you nail the introspection everything else about the emotions will fall into place the reader will connect your character and those emotions will hit I'm going to go over some examples from published novels so that you can get a sense of what this will actually look like in an active scene something is one of the early scenes from Stephen King's misery as an example if you have not read this book in about Paul Sheldon a writer who is in a car accident and his number one fan finds him takes him back to her house and won't let him leave so the scene that I'm going to be using examples from is one of the earlier sees in the book when he is first sort of becoming conscious after his accident and he's starting to realize that this woman is not quite right and that he may be in danger so I'm going to be reading off my phone just because I don't want to underline in my book so I'm sorry if that is distracting to anybody I just you know I don't want to mark in my books so here's a piece of introspection that occurs shortly after he wakes up why aren't I in the hospital this was clearly the question that wanted asking but he wasn't sure it was a question either of them wanted act not yet anyway now in this short of introspection there was no statement of emotion and there was no physical emotional reaction but you understand the anxiety that he has about asking a question without there needing to be any direct explanation or statement of the anxiety so his captor feeds him some food and then there is a bit of dialogue followed by some introspections yes I'm full banks it was very good do you have a lot of livestock because he was already thinking if you do that means you've got to have some help a hired man at least help was the operative word already that seemed like the operant word and he had seen she worn a wedding ring again we don't need to be told that he's afraid in this situation is very clear that he is afraid because of his introspection there's no need for physical reaction and there is no need for a statement were telling of his emotions in this scene Stephen King also does use some direct statements some telling of emotion what follows it with introspection and this can be a very effective way to convey emotions especially if you want to make sure that the emotions are coming across clearly so for example there's a passage that reads there was a queer interval of silence and Paul was frightened by what he saw on her face because what he saw was nothing the black nothing of a cravat folded into an alpine meadow blackness where no flowers grew and into which the drop might be long the entire power of this passage comes from the introspection of the character it's not coming from this statement paul was frightened but it does help to emphasize the point or the intention just being frightened isn't a lot of depth it's not a lot to connect to but there's a lot more going on when you add that introspection and there the uniqueness to the characters reaction so I'm also going to use examples from Locke two moons by Sharon Creech this was my copy when I was a little girl it is very well loved as you can see and it has some really good examples of introspection so this is not only a passage of introspection but this is actually the beginning of the novel just over a year ago my father plucked me up like a weed and took me in all our belongings no that's not true he did not bring the chestnut tree the willow the maple the hayloft or the swimming hole which all to me and we drove 300 miles straight north and stopped in front of a house in Euclid Ohio no trees I said this is where we're going to live now there is dialogue in this passage but the strength comes from the intersection the intersection adds so much to the dialogue and her unique way of perceiving the trees and the swimming hole is belonging to her even though those are things obviously that you can't take on a move it means so much more than just a simple articulation of it was sad to leave her you know she missed the things that she left behind it's so unique to the characters a way that this is described and that gets so much more emotional power to the description I was wishing I was invisible outside the leaves were falling to the ground and I was infinitely sad sat down to my bone I was sad for Phoebe and her parents and prudence and Mike after the leaves that were dying and sad for myself for something I had lost so this is a really powerful passage even though it does actually rely on both telling and sort of a cliche sort of metaphor with the leaves falling and sadness but it says so much about the character and it gives us so much emotion it doesn't come from the statements of being sad it comes from how she's expressing that she's sad so the last example I'm going to use is from Memoirs of a Geisha and this is a passage that happens right after she learned that her mother is dying after this I couldn't hear their voices any longer three my ears I heard a sound like a bird's wings flapping in panic perhaps it was my heart I don't know but if you've ever seen a bird trapped inside the Great Hall of the temple looking for some way out well that was how my mind was reacting it had never occurred to me that my mother wouldn't simply go on being sick I won't say I never wondered what might happen if she should die I did wonder about it the same way I wondered what would happen if our house was swallowed up by an earthquake there could hardly be life after such an event this passage says so much about how she is interpreting the death of her mother the realization that her mother is going to die and how especially because she is a child that hadn't occurred to her that she didn't understand that connection between being Lille and actually dying so this is really unique to her perspective on the event and it's a lot more unique than just saying she was sad or you know her heart pounded or she felt faint you could convey the emotion in that way but it's the introspection that gives so much power to that description and the reader really likes to have that kind of special unique interpretation in that unique perspective because it's just so much more interesting to read about I really hope this video helped you to understand some ways that you can improve the emotional connection the reader has with your writing this video has been part of my novel boot camp series I will be making new videos three to four days per week throughout August I also have workshops on my blog so if you want to check that out the link is in the description happy writing guys

Channel: Ellen Brock

Views: 129,745

Rating: 4.9788108 out of 5

Keywords: how to, describe, emotion, melodrama, melodramatic, cliche, novel, writing, writer, editing, editor, creative writing, fiction, convey, emotions, emotional, ellen brock, novel boot camp

Id: EzfLBkCgnYo

Length: 11min 55sec (715 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 16 2017