This is something that happens every day in your life. A shift of your eyebrow in skepticism, or the way your lip may twitch to a half smile cause you’re trying not to laugh. These behaviors are vital for writing in character, because not only do the allow you to visually see what is happening but it is also reaffirming whatever emotion your character is showing.
So why should you write it?
Much of human communication is non-verbal which means you need to also translate this non-verbal reaction in a post. It allows you to greatly enhance the emotions of another character and always another person to ‘visually’ see how they feel in a post. Most of all, this will add depth and volume to your post to make it feel more real. IT will make your character feel like a human instead of just another fictional person you look at from above.
Below you will find a list different type of emotions and what sort of body language can be exhibited to them.
Three ways to accent an action.
When writing about emotions, there are different ways to verbally write them out. Each one is unique in their own way, allowing you to show more about the emotion.
Emphasize the Emotion.
But doing this, you are expressing both the emotion and the body language. We’ll use a simple example. It’s short and simple yet you can sense he is happy.
John felt so happy that he was humming a tune while walking down the hall.
Complicate the Emotion.
Sometimes, even when you are feeling one emotion, deep down rooted underneath the facade of it all, there is actually an underlining emotion they feel. This is something you have to truly express otherwise no one will know.
John felt so happy that he was humming a tune while walking down the hall. However, it was obvious by the way his nose crinkled that he was disgusted by the actions beforehand. Instead, John covered it up by appearing pleased today.
Contradict the Emotion.
This is a little different than complicate. Contradicting means that you are claiming one thing when in fact its the other. In many ways, this has a variety of uses, from inner depth of the truth to what you see in person, or someone creating a wall. It could be considered a lie, but when is anything that easy?
John felt so happy that he was humming a tune while walking down the hall. In truth, once he was in the classroom, his shoulders slumped and a pout crossed his lips when no one was around, showing just how displeased he was with the situation.
Remember that you do not always have to contradict or complicate anything. Sometimes all you need to do is emphasize and that will be just fine. You don’t always have to have an underlining complicated for an emotion to make it more enhanced.
Do be afraid to use the Thesaurus to also improve an emotion. Such things as “happy” is a nice emotional word, but think of how much more powerful it is when you heard some is “overjoyed” or “content.” She how these emotions matched up with a body language can give two different styles of happiness? Mix and match to find what works best for your character at the time.
More In Depth Information
What I’ve stated above is more of a simplistic overview. IF you truly want to improve yourself, go to this
To see just how much body language can reveal about a person. You will find things such as how a person lies, how the eyes reaction, the positioning of a person in personal space, mouth, and head body language and so much more.
Use these resources to greatly increase the reactions of your character to another and create a more life-like world.
in most routes, sans will quietly endure whatever suffering is forced upon him. he can live through the callous murder of his brother, the slaughtering of his friends and peers, and yet he’ll do nothing to frisk but berate them. instead of disposing the human the instant they begin harming others, sans watches and waits, appearing near the end of frisk’s journey only to launch his emotional appeals. he attempts to guilt trip frisk, and by extension, the player, rather than get his own hands dirty.
there is only one exception: the genocide route. only when the situation has become the most dire does sans spring into action to do what’s right. what makes the genocide route so different from an especially violent neutral route? why does sans only wait until the genocide route to fight? continue reading for the reasons.
A visual compilation of the events before Undertale based on research from @nochocolate. Special thanks to the mods of NoChocolate for all the help and proofreading!
Not every event is captured on this timeline, but the main chronological order of events and the rare, specific mentions of dates are included. In order to be as objective as possible, theories and speculation have been omitted. All data has been taken at face value (including possible hyperbole, such as Bratty claiming they’ve been underground for “millennia”).
(Updated on April 4, 2016 to include Dogamy, Dogaressa, and Napstablook.)
I got a great anonymous ask last week from someone who wanted to know how to identify weak spots in their writing. One
of the things that comes with time and experience is finding the
language to identify, discuss, and address the feeling that something
isn’t quite right or that a story is “missing something.” Not
knowing them or their writing, of course I couldn’t help them figure out what
specifically the problem was. But I did share with them a list of things I’ve done
over the years to be able to identify weak spots and improve my writing.
1. Analyze your favorite writers.
Figure
out why you like the writing that you like. Ask yourself: What are they
doing here? What are they doing that I’m not doing? Why do I love their
writing so much? Take notes on their stories. Plot them. Write in the
margins. Read them slowly. Read their reviews—both good and bad. Did
that writer you love once write something you hated? Great, even better.
Figure out why that particular book was different from the others.
2. Analyze your own writing.
Do you have an older story you wrote that you love? Figure out why.
What did you do differently in that story that you’re not doing in the
current story you’re writing? Make notes. Draw maps. Reverse engineer
everything.
3. Develop a language to talk and think about writing.
Read
craft books, blogs, anything you can get your hands on. Learn about
point of view, conflict, character development, dialogue, story
structure, syntax, metaphors. Get your advice from good sources, and
don’t believe everything you read. If something doesn’t sit right with
you, throw it out. But be open to everything.
4. Journal and write about your writing.
Over time, you will identify consistent weaknesses that you have. Then,
in the future, when you feel like “something is missing” from your
writing, you can reference your notes and remember, for example, that
you often have difficulty with your protagonist’s motivation, with
theme, with dialogue, etc., and you’ll have a better idea about where to
go looking.
5. Share your writing with someone you trust, ideally a more experienced writer than you or an editor or mentor.
Be very careful about who you share your writing with. Friends and
family are not always the best choice. You don’t want someone who’s just
going to throw around their uneducated opinion about your work, who has
a big ego, or who won’t be honest with you. Remember: “I liked it” or
“I didn’t like it” are useless pieces of feedback. You want someone who
can read your work and say, “Your protagonist’s passion for music made
them really likeable to me. I was dying to know whether they would get
into the conservatory or not!” or “My attention wandered on page two,
when you described the couch upholstery for three paragraphs.”
6. Analyze the areas of your writing which are commonly problematic for new writers (and writers in general).
In
my experience as an editor, the most likely culprits are unclear
character motivation and lack of conflict. There are a lot of good
resources (books and blogs) about this. Try a Google search for “most
common mistakes beginning writers make.”
7. Trust your intuition.
Do you keep coming back to the same page or scene in your story, feeling like it isn’t right? You’re probably onto something.
8. Take time away from your writing.
You’d
be amazed how much more clear everything will be after a break. Give
yourself at least a week for a short story, 3-4 weeks for a novel. It
could also be the case that your ambitions for this particular story
don’t yet match your skills, and that you’ll have to wait even longer to
successfully finish it. I’ve known writers who have given up on a story
only to come back to it months or years later once they’d gained the
skills and insight to complete it. And then suddenly writing that story
seemed really easy!
catch of breath, choke, gulp, heave, inhale, pant, puff, snort, wheeze, huff, rasp, sharp intake of air, short of breath, struggle for breath, swallow, winded
This has been highly requested and a long time coming and finally, ‘tis done. I hope this proves useful to you. Enjoy!
Writing Quality Conversation
Dialogue Should Serve A Purpose
All pieces of dialogue in your story should serve a purpose. You just have to train your writer brain to ask itself what it accomplishes. Here are some examples of how dialogue functions:
Dialogue Is Not A Loophole To Tell Instead Of Show
You should not be using dialogue as a way to tell the reader what’s going on or how the setting looks or anything that is usually done in a narrative form. Trying to use dialogue as a way to get out of concisely describing the situation to the reader in an artistic and eloquent way is lazy and once you start, you start to believe you can get away with it more and more. Don’t let that slippery slope get you.
Be Inspired By Real Conversation, Don’t Mimic It
The truth is, your reader will not fault you for leaving out the “um..”s and the “eh..”s and the weird vocal mannerisms that you have assigned to your characters. Leave those for the movie adaptation. Instead, if you character is stopped in the middle of a statement, use “but he-” rather than “bu-” because that will read strangely in your reader’s head and stall them in the process, killing he momentum of the conversation.
If You’re Stuck With A Piece Of Dialogue, Read It Aloud
As a writer, you are also an actor, and if you are stuck on a line and need to act it out a few different ways to match one to your scene, so be it. Say it loudly, say it gravely, say it flirtatiously, whisper it; it doesn’t matter. Try it out yourself and find what works. Your reader is going to be hearing this in their head, so make sure you convey it exactly how you want it to sound.
Remember Who’s Speaking
Your characters are all different people with different word preferences and personal catch phrases and tonal patterns and vocal styles. Use this to your advantage. You are making a movie in your reader’s head, so use these specific characteristics to your advantage.
Dialogue Tags
Don’t Over-Do Dialogue Tags
There are a lot of very interesting and wonderful dialogue tags out there. You do not need to use all of them. If you have a very clear vision of how this line is said and you know that you want your reader to hear it that way, then use a dialogue tag, but if you know they’ll connect the dots from hearing the word “said”, then refrain from using a unique dialogue tag. Part of the fun of reading is having your own special imaginative freedom while consuming the story. Too many dialogue tags strip your reader of that freedom because every detail is directed.
Respect “Said”
Said is not dead. Said is very much alive and well and must not be taken for granted. Love Said and nurture Said and Said will be good to you and your story.
Flow
Use Action Between Periods Of Dialogue (Give Your Characters Stage Business)
This is pretty self-explanatory, but here’s an example of the wonders this simple fix can achieve:
“No,” he said, “I’m not leaving.”
vs.
“No,” He said, fixing his sleeve cuff calmly and meeting her eyes with an intimidating stare, “I’m not leaving.”
Don’t Include Too Much Information In One Conversation
Information in stories is supposed to be distributed evenly over time, not in a single conversation whenever you need to pack a bunch of knowledge into the reader in order for them to understand the next scene. Dialogue is also, again, not the method you are supposed to use in order to tell the reader all they need to know. Information about the setting, world, characters, past, present, and future is all supposed to be revealed through description, non-verbal communication, exposition, narration (if it allows), and other literary tools. Do not use dialogue to tell your reader everything.
Keep It Short
Dialogue, specifically individual pieces of dialogue, are meant to be short, informative, and sweet. Don’t drag it along, don’t make the discussion longer than it has to be, and going back to a previous point, don’t include unnecessary information.
This doesn’t need too much unboxing on its own, but just because someone has a thick British accent doesn’t mean that “you” is suddenly spelled “yeh”. This is incredibly difficult to get used to and can A. Confuse the reader, whether it be the first time they come across it or repeatedly over time, and B. bother the reader so much they end up putting the book down because it’s so exhausting trying to remember that “yeh” means “you”. If your reader has to repeatedly assure their self that yes, that is what they’ve just read, then your story is only going to suffer for it.
*Side note: this does not apply to fanfiction. This is because, most of the time, the reader has an idea of what the protagonist’s voice sounds like and can therefore navigate the writing without a problem because they aren’t trying to form a unique voice in the narrative. Just something I thought I should mention. Sorry if this sounds ridiculous to non-fanfiction readers.
When you are writing a story and refer to a character by a physical trait, occupation, age, or any other attribute, rather than that character’s name, you are bringing the reader’s attention to that particular attribute. That can be used quite effectively to help your reader to focus on key details with just a few words. However, if the fact that the character is “the blond,” “the magician,” “the older woman,” etc. is not relevant to that moment in the story, this will only distract the reader from the purpose of the scene.
If your only reason for referring to a character this way is to avoid using his or her name or a pronoun too much, don’t do it. You’re fixing a problem that actually isn’t one. Just go ahead and use the name or pronoun again. It’ll be good.
Someone finally spelled out the REASON for using epithets, and the reasons NOT to.
In addition to that:
If the character you are referring to in such a way is THE VIEWPOINT CHARACTER, likewise, don’t do it. I.e. if you’re writing in third person but the narration is through their eyes, or what is also called “third person deep POV”. If the narration is filtered through the character’s perception, then a very external, impersonal description will be jarring. It’s the same, and just as bad, as writing “My bright blue eyes returned his gaze” in first person.
Furthermore,
if the story is actually told through the eyes of one particular viewpoint character even though it’s in the third person, and in their voice, as is very often the case, then you shouldn’t refer to the characters in ways that character wouldn’t.
In other words, if the third-person narrator is Harry Potter, when Dumbledore appears, it says “Dumbledore appears”, not “Albus appears”. Bucky Barnes would think of Steve Rogers as “Steve”, where another character might think of him as “Cap”. Chekov might think of Kirk as “the captain”, but Bones thinks of him as “Jim”.
Now, there are real situations where you, I, or anybody might think of another person as “the other man”, “the taller man”, or “the doctor”: usually when you don’t know their names, like when there are two tap-dancers and a ballerina in a routine and one of the men lifts the ballerina and then she reaches out and grabs the other man’s hand; or when there was a group of people talking at the hospital and they all worked there, but the doctor was the one who told them what to do. These are all perfectly natural and normal. Similarly, sometimes I think of my GP as “the doctor” even though I know her name, or one of my coworkers as “the taller man” even though I know his. But I definitely never think of my long-term life partner as “the green-eyed woman” or one of my best friends as “the taller person” or anything like that. It’s not a sensible adjective for your brain to choose in that situation – it’s too impersonal for someone you’re so intimately acquainted with. Also, even if someone was having a one night stand or a drunken hookup with a stranger, they probably wouldn’t think of that person as “the other man”: you only think of ‘other’ when you’re distinguishing two things and you don’t have to go to any special effort to distinguish your partner from yourself to yourself.
This is something that I pretty consistently have to advise for those I beta edit for. (It doesn’t help that I relied on epithets a lot in the earlier sections of my main fic because I was getting into the swing of things.) I am reblogging this so fanfic writers can use this as a reference.
A good rule of thumb: a character’s familiarity with another character decreases the need for an epithet (and most times you really don’t need one at all).
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