How to Express Emotions in our Writing

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Back in the days when families gathered around the radio, great stories were told without visual assistance. Listeners had to see tears flow, the bellies jiggle with laughter, the blood fill an angry face through voice inflections, organs, and sound effects.

Expressing emotion over the radio teleported the listener into westerns where the Lone Ranger and Tonto saved the world, into mysteries where "Only the Shadow Knows," and into other exciting dramas and adventures. 

Any listener could picture the characters responses in their mind with clarity as a result of quality audio communication (for the day). Oddly enough, most listener's pictures differed.

Radio stories have an advantage over visual media in that it allows the listener to interpret an emotions based on their own prior knowledge. I must confess, I pictured Whit's End and Whit completely different from the Odyssey Videos! I liked my image...then again, my daughter had yet another image. (Odyssey is a Christian children's radio series by Focus on the Family). Who was wrong? No one.

How can we create scenes that project a clarity to each reader,

enabling him/her to paint vivid, independent pictures

yet each fully accurate?

A few weeks ago, I attended a My Book Therapy Monday bleacher chat class taught by Beth Vogt. her topic: Emotional Layers. During the session, Beth recommended we keep an "Emotional Journal" to add color and life to our writing.

The task:        Record a time when we experienced a given emotion.
The purpose: To capture the essence of the emotion for use in our writing.

One week later I attended a funeral for a beloved family member. I wrote in my Emotional Journal:

The experience so tore at my being, I could not speak. Tears poured in a deluge and a torrential storm ripped through my veins. Every hug from a family member or friend only brought more tears. Sorrow added an unbearable weight to my heart already void of consolation. Not one word came forward to form a sentence in my mind. As for comfort? Not a flicker. I couldn't stand. I couldn't sit. I couldn't sleep or eat. I could only cry...because I didn't know whether this beloved person went to Heaven or not. 

When at last I could record sorrow in my Emotional Journal, I realized the task was greater than I first imagined.

I recalled the family member's husband, the children, grandchildren and friends. People of different ages, genders, relationships, each having their own response.

I expanded the assignment filling pages with responses from the myriad of ages, genders, and relations. Here is one I included:

The third grade grandson playfully laughed at Grandma's home before the funeral. He sat with a watchful eye during the service. But when he stood with the older grandsons as a pallbearer he wept...uncontrollably. His light skin faded to a paler hue. With red swollen eyes, he held his grandfather's hand and walked with him to the reception hall and there they sat silently looking down at the table. Not a word, yet so many. A few moments later, he looked up at his grandfather then ran off to play.


The new task I gave myself for my Emotional Journal was not not only to write down my response to an emotion, but also the responses I observe in others; after all, my characters will differ in age, gender, race, creed, relationship, and etc.

I also chose to include my own varied responses from different ages, settings, and relationship for the emotion. My description storehouse for emotions has multiplied exponentially.

Now it's your turn. Briefly relate the experience: "new."  It can be from any time in your life, any place. Let's see how "new" can affect others differently.
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If you found any typos in today's post...sorry about that. 

Mary has moved to Michigan with her husband, closer to her three college kids. She misses the mountains of Montana, but loves seeing family more often. She writes young adult mystery/adventure Christian fiction, is honing marketing and writing skills, and loves to pen missionary and Bible adventure stories on her ministry blog, God Loves Kids.

Visit Mary at her website and her ministry blog to families: God Loves Kids. Or chat on Facebook or Twitter