In the post, Show vs. Tell in Your Novel, I talked about when to show and when to tell in your stories. I also gave ideas of words and phrases to use instead of words such as angry, shy, worried.

In this post, I’m going to focus on showing instead of telling by giving you ideas on:

• how to put more feeling behind your descriptions when you “Show”
• how to get better at showing emotion
• where there are great places to go and practice this skill

Grab that notebook, pen, beverage, and plunk yourself down in your favorite chair and let’s get started.

Showing Those Feelings

I am naturally an overly expressive person. When my husband describes something that happened that day or something interesting he might have seen, he does it in as few words as possible. He just tells the facts.

As a partner, that’s perfectly fine. For a writer, it’s not the way to write a story. When I’m telling my husband about my day, I can feel him wanting to roll his eyes ten minutes into my story as I’m including every descriptive word that exists in the English language.

Even though writers, I believe, are naturally inclined to use descriptive language, I think most of us could always improve.

I’m going to give you what I think is a wonderful and effective exercise that can improve your descriptive writing. You can really make it enjoyable too.

Really put your emotions behind your descriptions. Try to be as unique as you can in how you describe what a person is feeling and doing. Practice writing descriptions that aren’t cheesy, but really capture what the person is doing. You’ll want to paint a picture for your reader without using the obvious words to describe what a character is thinking, feeling, or doing.

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Consider This Writing Exercise:

Choose any location that sounds enjoyable to you. Here’s what I like to do sometimes for a change of pace. I choose a location where there are usually a variety of people such as at a:

• mall
• park
• cafe’
• department store
• restaurant
• shopping center

Have a notebook and pen with you. Get yourself some ice cream or something else you find yummy and find a place to sit.

• watch people walk, talk, interact
• watch their expressions, gestures, body language
• try to pick up their personalities and emotions without necessarily hearing what’s being said
• be careful not to invade anyone’s privacy, so don’t write down any actual conversations you may overhear
• in your own words, describe in your notebook what emotions they’re showing, their mannerisms, body language, clothing description, how they laugh WITHOUT using any words that end in -ly… NO ADVERBS

You’re practicing showing not telling. Avoid writing that someone is looking at someone angrily or that they’re speaking calmly.

You can write that down at first so you don’t lose what you’re observing if people are moving by quickly, but make sure you then change those telling words into descriptive text.

Maybe that person you see isn’t just responding angrily. Maybe she stomped her foot, holding tight fists stiffly by her side.

This exercise is so enjoyable. You’ll learn so much simply observing people. Imagine each person you’re observing is one of your characters and you want to bring what they’re doing to life, describing to your reader what they’re doing without using the common descriptive words.

Have a blast. Enjoy that ice cream.

Happy Writing!

Click here to purchase my Amazon eBooks, How to Create a Protagonist Your Readers Will Never Forget and A Girl from Nowhere