Emotion 2: Representing character emotion

Inspiration images for this lesson

For the rest of this lesson we're going to do a lot of variation-writing.

You might find it helpful to have an inspiration image handy, something to spark your imagination and make it easier to come up with characters and situations, so that you can focus on representing emotions.

We're not going to give you a specific inspiration image, because we don't want to lock you into a specific emotion.

  • You'll need to choose your own image or use your imagination.
  • We have a couple of suggestions in a gallery for you below. 
  • Otherwise you can google for your own ideas or use your imagination.

Here are a few images for your inspiration. If you see something you like, open it in a new tab so you can save it and refer to it while you write.

Cute girl running a cute store with a cute dog

(By Zhi Lin Lim)

A team of young women athletes in their locker room before a match, serious and sombre and attentive

(By Annie Flanagan)

Two tiny gnomes face a terrifying giant cat in the snow

(By Jakub Rozalski)

A young woman sits on a train being annoyed by an older man

(By Berthold Woltze)

Boys Skateboarding In Streets Of New York, 1960s, in between cars and traffic having fun

(Photographer unknown)

A group of fantasy character like elves dwarves and ogres in a tavern scheming over gold

(By Albert Urmanov)

Atomic Bomb test Las Vegas

(From the Las Vegas News Bureau, photographer unknown—that's a nuclear blast in the distance)

We want to show you the inspiration images we used when writing the worked examples in this lesson, so you can see for yourself the kinds of emotions we were trying to represent.

Both these images are naive, like children's illustrations. We like them because they capture clear and strong feelings: joy and anger.

Cheerful and cute painting of a penguin in a top hat and a corgi standing on a boardwalk with a bucket to feed some seagulls

(By Atey Ghalian, an artist in Sweden)

Painting of a small samurai dog yelling at a ninja cat

(By Gop Gap, an artist in Thailand)

Do you have an inspiration image?

If so, let's move on.

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