Conveying emotion: verbal and nonverbal is not the easiest thing to do. Authors are always presented with the challenge to show and not tell. This concept can be difficult for some, even more so when it comes to conveying emotion. In order to give your novel the best chance of success, it has to evoke emotion in the reader. It doesn’t matter if that emotion is rooting for the hero or despising an antihero or protagonist. Your characters should be as “human” as you are. Emotion guides most of our decisions and actions in real life and the same applies to your book’s characters. It’s these emotions, decisions, and actions which propel your plot forward. They force your characters to choose one path over another, overcome obstacles, or elicit those eureka moments that can solve a crime, solidify a romance, or drive an action scene.
Verbal emotion is often conveyed through dialogue, but don’t forget the physical aspect of emotion as well. Body language is a huge part of nonverbal communication. It’s one thing to verbally convey a thought, an opinion, or an idea, but if body language conveys something different, you think twice, right?
It’s all about balance
Conveying emotion through verbal and nonverbal cues and/or communication can be done externally or internally, depending on point of view. Dialogue is the most common and effective way to convey what a character thinks or believes, but body language, visceral responses, and mental thought processes are also equally important.
This combination of physical signals goes a long way toward improving character development and depth often conveyed as three-dimensional. Of course, a balance must always be maintained between conveying too much or too little emotion.
One thing I learned as a novice writer was to watch for sentence structure that attempts to describe emotion when you’re in that person’s POV.
For example: She looked at him with sad eyes.
Or: His face turned beet red with anger.
What do sad eyes look like? Unless the character is looking in a mirror, how can the character know what their face looks like? When conveying emotion from a character’s perspective, mental and internal cues are required. For example, blurred vision, a sense of despair, blinking, hands tightly clasping one another, a flush, tightened fists, halting speech pattern, and so forth. You get the picture.
When developing characters, don’t just tell the reader what the character is feeling. Show them. Your goal is to step into your character’s persona so they can feel those emotions for themselves.