Don’t Tell Me He’s Angry

Your character is furious. Bile rises in his throat and half chokes him. And you write:

‘How dare you,’ he said angrily. He stamped his feet. His heart pounded.

Your reader gets the idea, but they feel nothing.

You’ve told them there’s an emotion, but you haven’t let them experience one.

There’s a massive difference.

And that difference matters in all types of fiction, and especially so in speculative fiction.

Saying, telling, moving  — these are all props. They tell the emotion. And each prop fails in its own way.

I’ll list some common problems and possible solutions.

‘He said angrily,’

This gives the reader a label. An adverb. That adverb does the reader’s thinking for them.

If your dialogue clearly shows the anger, you won’t need to say your character was furious. If the dialogue isn’t showing the emotion, rewrite it until it does. 

‘He stamped his feet.’

Movement looks like a solution; it isn’t repeating dialogue, and wouldn’t movement be showing? Can’t you just visualise those feet being stamped?

But stamping feet, or clenched fists, or faces turning puce is something of a stock gesture. A cliché in motion. Along with door slamming and teeth grinding, we’ve read this a hundred times before. 

And those movements could appear anywhere. On its own fury doesn’t tell us where we are.

You can do better.

‘His heart pounded,’

Is this a cliché? Is this a trope? No, it’s ‘Super Generic Tag!’.

Most human bodies behave the same way when they’re stressed. This makes physiology a general (and dull) way of saying what’s going on. 

And unrealistic, too. If you’re howling with fury, you probably won’t notice your pulse.

The Common Problem

These three ‘solutions’ all fail because they all tell.

The adverb tells us with a label. The foot-stamping and the pounding heart tell us with a cliché.

It’s like writing the word ‘ANGRY’ on a post-it note and sticking it to your character’s head.

A Real Solution

Don’t tell the emotion. Show that feeling through behaviour only your character could show.

Bonus points if you can make that showing fit the precise moment your character lives in, and their exact citation. Make the emotion fit the scenario.

Consider three areas.

What They Do

Have your character make a specific choice.

Does their anger show in a scary form of politeness? 

Do they show grief by carrying out a chore very, very thoroughly?

Could they respond to danger by freezing? Or by becoming manic?

Give us an inkling of what sits inside their minds.

What they Notice

Emotions can affect how we perceive our world.

Could your character stare at the floor when they’re stressed and start counting specks on the carpet?

Do they pay attention to a speaker’s lips, or notice if their accuser has shaved that day?

Show us your character is an individual.

What They Won’t Say

Your character’s dialogue can show what’s happening. They’ll choose certain words, use a certain rhythm when they speak, and they’ll also reveal themselves by what they don’t say.

Imagine a man returning bloodied and bruised from a battle. His brother’s wife asks him where her husband is. The returning fighter asks about food instead, or about the weather; the readers can develop their own ideas about the husband’s fate.

And a reader’s own thoughts are usually more vivid than anything a writer tells them.

An example: Emotions re-written

Avoid saying:

“You can’t be serious,” James said angrily. ‘He stamped his feet, and his heart pounded.’

Instead say:

‘You can’t be serious.’ James set his cup down carefully. Take enough care with the cup, and he’d resist the urge to throw it at Mike’s head. ‘Say it again. Slowly. I want to hear the part where my brother gets the ship.’

The rewrite avoids using labels. It doesn’t force emotion down the reader’s throat.

James takes care with the cup, and that care is tailored exactly to the situation. We get the sensation James knows himself well; he is passionate but has learnt how to focus that passion. The request for a repeat is a threat using good manners. 

The reader needs to figure this out, but readers often enjoy this challenge. A reader who assembles an emotion themselves will often remember that emotion.

Grief can work the same way.

Avoid saying:

            “Mara felt a wave of grief wash over her. Tears streamed down her face.”

Instead say:

“Mara ran the diagnostic again. The lifepod’s batteries and radio were fine. She ran the diagnostic a third time. Outside the viewpoint, the lifepod shrank to a point and vanished, but she kept her eyes on the console and on those unwavering numbers. Those numbers made sense.”

The rewrite shows everything and tells very little. The emotion lives in Mara’s pointless busywork, and her refusal to look out of the viewport.

And this is unashamedly science fiction: the diagnostic and the lifepod illustrate the genre.

Anger can stop a magical system from working. Fear might stop an ID scanner from working properly. A panicking crew member might not remember the right commands.

Speculative fiction hands you instruments like no other genre; don’t fear using these tools to show what passions sit inside your character’s minds.

Two modern SFF writers are worth studying here.

Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth shows readers an angry protagonist for most of the time. Gideon is angry at her indenture, and at her world, and even at her whole life.

Muir almost never tells us this. This rage arrives instead as relentless sarcasm and bravado, and that voice lets us glimpse inside Gideon’s mind.

N. K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season shows a mother finding her murdered son. The mother doesn’t break down and doesn’t start screaming. Instead, there’s silence; she sits with the body, and the prose flattens.

The grief is shown in what the mother doesn’t do.

An exercise for you

Take one of your paragraphs where you’ve named an emotion.

Delete the name you’ve given that emotion. Delete all the stock gestures linked to that emotion; delete the sweating palms, the gnashed teeth, and those pounding heartbeats. Remove the telling.

Now ease back into showing the feeling. Use only your character’s actions: what they do, what they notice, or what they say.

Have you felt that emotion yourself? Dig those memories out and remember what you said or didn’t say at that moment. 

What did you feel, and how did you act? Stay as authentic as possible. Chat with your friends and see how they expressed themselves when passion seized them.

Read widely and see how top-notch authors show what their characters feel.

Lean on your world and your characters. Show off your setting and your chosen genre with pride. 

Yes, this authenticity will be tough, and it’ll take you time. But staying genuine will immerse your readers in your story. It’ll keep them reading and keep them seeking out your future stories. 

Comments? Questions? Get in touch.

Until next time.

Kevin Elliott

www.writerssecrettoolkit.com