Emotion is affected by narrative distance

When describing anything in a story, we need to choose how close we want to get, and this is true of emotions.

We can describe things as if seeing them from a distance.

Wide shot of a street in which US soldiers help children play jump rope in World War 2

Or we can get right up close.

Closeup photo of a boy crying while parent holds his hand

Let's look at an example of each of these approaches in the context of writing about emotions.