Emotion 2: Representing character emotion

What's underneath our emotions?

We've looked at emotions as labels—both quality words or adjectives such as sad, happy, regretful, disappointed, excited, as well as verbs or actions such as to regret, to despair, to excite.

But what are we actually labelling when we use these words?

One thing that we are labelling with these words are feelings.

And we don't mean feelings as a synonym for emotion; we mean actual, literal feelings inside your body.

Here's an example from a novel called Written in the Stars. The narrator is a teenage Pakistani American girl called Naila who is in trouble with her parents.

What's the trigger, what's the feeling, and what's the emotion?

"No," comes a quiet but firm voice from behind the paper veil. My mother lowers the newspaper and looks directly at me. I feel a sinking sensation.

Written in the Stars(2015)
What are the trigger, feeling, and emotion in this snippet?
  • Trigger: Naila's mother saying no and lowering her newspaper and looking directly at her daughter.
  • Feeling: A sinking sensation. (Where in Naila's body would you imagine that sensation to be felt?)
  • Emotion: But what's the emotion?

Unlike the snippets we've seen so far, this one doesn't label the emotion. It leaves us to imagine what that is for ourselves.

How would you label her emotion?

It's probably something from the 'fear' family of emotions—she's afraid, worried, disturbed, anxious—or maybe she's ashamed, embarrassed, disappointed, humiliated.

Any or all of these labels might capture some aspect of what Naila's feeling.

Here's the next moment in the same story:

"Have you been speaking with him?"

My heart begins to pound.

Written in the Stars(2015)
What are the trigger, feeling, and emotion in this snippet?
  • Trigger: Naila's mother asking if she's been speaking to her boyfriend.
  • Feeling: Her heart pounding.
  • Emotion: Unlabelled—again we need to infer the emotion from the feeling.

What might Naila's pounding heart mean? 

It could mean she's excited, hopeful, thrilled, enamoured. However, given the context, it's more likely that she's afraid, worried, terrified.

What's the difference between the label and the feeling?

When we say that we're happy or sad, we're really just summarising a complicated bundle of feelings (and thoughts, which we'll talk about later).

Sometimes that label is enough to get our point across, but sometimes we want to give other people a stronger sense of what we—or a character—is experiencing.

One way we can do that is by describing the physical feelings underneath the emotion.

Let's rewrite some snippets to explore this further.

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