One of the most powerful aspects of fiction is that when it’s done well, we feel what the characters are feeling. When the characters are afraid, we’re afraid. They make us giddy with new love or angry at injustice. When we stop reading, we feel like we’ve had a cathartic emotional experience. We’ve lived an adventure with the characters.

But without that emotional resonance, the story often falls flat. We don’t feel connected with the characters, so we may not care what happens to them. Or perhaps the emotion feels melodramatic, so we don’t believe these characters actually exist. So how do you create an effective connection between your reader and your characters? There are entire books devoted to this topic, but here are some quick tips to heighten emotions within a scene.

Showing emotion through physical reactions

If you’ve studied writing craft at all, you’ve likely heard the directive “show, don’t tell.” When people say this, they’re often referring to the way emotions are conveyed. There are times when it’s quick and effective to state how a character is feeling. Sometimes, we just need to summarize the character’s emotion, and perhaps it’s not important to draw the readers along with them. However, the majority of the time, we want our characters’ emotions to be visceral. Stating “Esmerelda was sad” isn’t going to make anyone feel anything. For one, this is just a dry assertion. It’s not much more engaging than describing the grass as green. Even if we switch it up to use more specific language (“Esmerelda was despondent”), it still doesn’t have resonance.

When we experience emotion, we feel it in our body. For example, I feel anxiety in my stomach, to the extent that sometime I think I’m nervous, but I just have an upset digestive system. When we’re despondent, we may cry—or do everything we can to keep ourselves from crying. So if we want to show Esmerelda’s despondency, we might describe her slumped on the kitchen tiles with her face buried in her knees as she tries to keep from crying. If our reader has been engaged in the story to this point, and the events leading up to this moment justify Esmerelda’s response, this could move the reader to feel her pain.

Remember, too, that this doesn’t apply only to big emotions. Small emotions, such as frustration or impatience, can be shown with simple reactions such as curled fists or a tapping toe. Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi’s The Emotion Thesaurus is a great resource for finding internal and external reactions to specific emotions. You can search from their list of nuanced emotions and find both physical behaviors and internal sensations associated with that emotion. This allows you to portray emotions of both the point-of-view character and other characters whose thoughts can’t be directly shared without breaking perspective.

There are some dangers here, however. It’s easy to overuse this kind of reaction. We can end up with Esmerelda clenching her teeth and curling her fingers into fist, her heart racing and her blood raging while she screams in fury. Maybe we’re showing her emotion here, but it’s over the top, like a badly written soap opera. Instead of creating resonance, we’re driving readers away with outlandish melodrama. Less is usually more when it comes to conveying emotion through physical reactions.

The other danger is that we can end up with repetitive, cliché reactions. (Let’s not talk about how much swallowing, lip biting, and jaw clenching I’ve had to remove from my drafts.) Physical reactions work well in moderation, but they draw attention to themselves if overused, as they often are in first drafts. Consider replacing them with actions that convey emotion but are more specific to both the character and the scene. For example, if two characters are eating dinner, their emotion can be portrayed both through their dialogue and their interactions with their food and the environment. Do the characters look at their food more than each other? Does one character take too many sips of water because the silence is awkward? Is one of them shoveling food into their mouth like they haven’t had a meal in weeks, while the other is pushing food around on the plate and barely taking bites? Does one grip their fork too tightly? These all convey what the characters are feeling without generic actions.

Furthermore, the more we can use actions and reactions that are specific to the character’s personality and quirks, the more our characters will pop off the page as real people. We all have little things we do that show how we’re feeling that other people might not do. For example, my husband fidgets with his impressively long beard when he’s thinking. In the Keeper of the Lost Cities series, Sophie tugs out her eyelashes when she’s stressed. In one of my unpublished YA novels, the main character’s tongue feels like it’s swelling when she’s nervous. These “tells” can become too much if they’re used constantly, but they can be an effective way to both convey emotion efficiently and make characters stand out as unique.

Show emotion through internal thoughts

Whether writing in first person or close third person perspective, most of us write in the common contemporary convention of looking through one person’s point of view at a time. When we’re in a character’s point of view, the reader gets to see deep into their thoughts. Everything—description, opinions on people and events—is filtered through that character’s viewpoint. This allows us ample opportunity to show what they are feeling by what they are thinking about at a given moment. For example, if our characters are on a date at a restaurant, and one of them keeps thinking about the last time she was there (which happens to be when her now-ex proposed) we may get vibes of her bitterness or sadness or complete lack of interest in this new prospect—or perhaps a mixture of all of this. That’s the thing with human emotions: They’re rarely simple. This is another reason naming emotions often doesn’t work. I can say Esmerelda is sad, but is she? Maybe she’s sad and angry and hopeful all at the same time. Maybe she’s not really sad, but numb. Emotions are complex, and trying to convey that through one word often doesn’t ring true because that one word isn’t accurate. Inner monologue allows us to explore the depths of our characters’ feelings without stating them. They often leave the emotion as subtext that resonates below the surface.

Here’s an example from the beginning of Laura Weymouth’s The Light Between Worlds (a book that I don’t recommend reading without a box of tissues nearby):

We’re burying Old Nick in the back garden. It’s just Jamie and me, and it’s raining, and I know he’s worried because of the way he stands, head bowed, shoulders tense.

“You can cry, Ev,” he says, and takes my hand in his own. No one’s held my hand in such a long time, and I nearly do cry at that, because he’s always so kind to me. But if I’ve learned anything in life, it’s to choke back tears and smile.

In this passage, Evelyn doesn’t state how she’s feeling. However, we get a strong sense of her loneliness and grief by the way she reacts to her brother taking her hand and how she fights against showing her emotions. There’s an instant connection to her because her feelings are relatable and realistic. Most of us have felt a similar way at some point in our lives, and Evelyn’s thoughts bring to mind times when we’ve experienced something similar, even if it’s subconscious. Then we feel her emotions along with her.

It’s important to consider context and pacing when including interior monologue. If our character is running for their life from a slavering four-headed velociraptor, they might be too focused on sensory details like the cramp in their side and their burning lungs to analyze why this dinosaur instills so much terror. The deep internal evaluation of their life decisions may need to wait for the following scene when they have a chance to reflect. Here, perhaps the physical reactions that convey terror (such as heightened senses) may be more effective.

Showing emotion through description

We experience the world differently based on our emotional state. A rainy day may be a comforting reason to snuggle with a book and a cup of tea, or it might be a dismal ruin of our romantic picnic. How characters view their surroundings and other people can reveal their emotional state.

Consider this example from E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars:

It’s a sharp place. Shining wood floors, huge windows, everything low to the ground. The halls of Clairmont used to be decorated floor to ceiling with black-and-white family photographs, paintings of dogs, bookshelves, and Granddad’s collection of New Yorker cartoons. New Clairmont’s halls are glass on one side and blank on the other.

From this passage, we get an idea of how Cadence feels about her grandfather’s new home. Some people may view it as modern and sleek, but she has a negative emotional reaction to it. She views it as empty and bleak, with no connection to family history. This also conveys to readers how they should feel about this place.

Another technique is to contrast the setting with the character’s emotion. Here’s an example from my yet-unpublished YA fantasy:

We head off down the wood-slatted trail into the woods, and I try to find the healing my mom said would be here. The green of the birches and evergreens and shrubs. The smell of pine. The roar of the waterfall in the distance. The chirping of birds. The trickle of sun through the treetops. It’s beautiful. Serene. Far removed from the concrete and highways and Targets and boxy new-construction houses of the southern Twin Cities suburbs.

So why does it make me so on edge? Like I’m not welcome here. Like I’m beyond broken.

The setting is beautiful, but the serenity of the North Shore of Lake Superior doesn’t match with the main character’s emotional state. This creates tension, revealing how her emotions aren’t what she would like them to be.

When naming emotion works

There are times when it works best to state an emotion. This may be during a summary when there’s no need for the reader to feel the emotion along with the character. This can also work well when the emotion is very specific, and the character is acutely aware of what they’re feeling. Typically, in a moment of fear, we don’t stop to think about how afraid we are. However, in moments of reflection, we may contemplate what we’re feeling, especially if we have a personality type that keeps us in tune with our emotions (hello, fellow INFPs!). This could even lead to an epiphany regarding emotions we’ve repressed, such as anger. In these instances in fiction, we probably aren’t trying to get the reader to experience the specific emotion related to the epiphany. Readers are likely already aware that the character has been feeling this (or they can tie the pieces together along with the character), and the emotion for the reader might be relief or satisfaction that the character has finally figured it out. As writers, we need to be aware of what emotion we’re trying to invoke in the reader. It might not always be the one we’re discussing.

Another time to consider naming an emotion is when there’s a particular emotion the character consistently battle against, such as rage or anxiety. In this case, they likely have recurring indicators (such as a dry mouth or trembling) that alert them to their own emotions. They know exactly what they’re feeling, so it makes sense that they reference it in their thoughts. Here’s an example from my speculative YA romance:

Unfortunately, he doesn’t get up. Either he can’t read the room, or he doesn’t care. I’m guessing it’s the latter. My anxiety is oozing off me like bad perfume. It usually makes people smile awkwardly and excuse themselves.

In this case, Letha struggles with persistent social anxiety. She is well aware of this, but her cognizance only increases her anxiety; it causes her to hyper-focus on what others think of her awkwardness. The physical elements of her anxiety have already been established in this scene, so readers have been given opportunity to experience the anxiety with her; now, she’s reflecting on it.

Of course, there are plenty of other instances when simply stating an emotion is effective. The key is to make sure this technique is not overused and that it’s the right situation for it. Also, we should make sure we’re not stating emotions that have already been shown. For example: “I wanted to run. My hands trembled with fear.” The fear is already conveyed through the desire to run and the trembling hands. This would be more effective if it were left as “I wanted to run. My hands trembled.”

Dig deeper to create surprise

In much of fiction (even the published stuff), emotions are shown effectively, but they still don’t resonate because… they’re boring. We find the standard big emotions like grief, anger, and fear. However, the best emotional scenes move past these basic emotions to create surprise in the reader. In most situations, there’s an emotion we expect a character to feel. They’re being chased by a velociraptor? We expect fear. They’re burying the family dog? We expect grief. But look back at the passage from The Light Between Worlds. Evelyn is burying the family dog. There is grief in the passage. However, grief isn’t the primary emotion, and it’s not really tied to the dog. What makes her nearly cry? Her brother holds her hand. This is unexpected. Weymouth digs deep into her character’s emotion and highlights something surprising (her deep loneliness), and it packs way more of a wallop than if Evelyn had simply been fighting back tears over the death of her dog. The unexpected emotion creates curiosity and a deeper connection.

In The Emotional Craft of Fiction, Donald Maass states, “Skillful authors play against expected feelings. They go down several emotional layers in order to bring up emotions that will catch readers by surprise.” So don’t stop at the obvious big emotions such as fear, sadness, and anger. Think more deeply and consider: What else is the character feeling? They may be feeling multiple emotions. The obvious emotions will likely come across as well, but the unexpected emotion is what will captivate readers.

For example, let’s say we have a character named Sue whose elderly mom just died. Sue is experiencing grief because she loved her mom. But her mom’s health had been declining, and she needed constant care. Even though her mom was in a memory care facility, Sue felt obligated to be there every day. She couldn’t make plans or go on a vacation because she didn’t have any siblings who could give her a reprieve. So Sue is also relieved that her mom has died. But she thinks she shouldn’t feel relieved; she should only be sad. So now she also feels guilty because she feels relief. When writing Sue’s reaction to her mom’s passing, now we have more to delve into—not that it all needs to be stated. Sue might not even be aware that she feels all of this. We can convey this to the reader in the way she acts with other characters. Perhaps she’s overly defensive when someone says her life will be easier now, because she doesn’t want them to know she feels that way. Or she shuts down when someone talks about the devastation caused by their parent’s death, because that heightens her guilt.

The key is to have an understanding of what our characters are feeling in each scene, and to push ourselves to think more deeply about the complexity of their emotions. Once we’ve determined this, we can look for ways to layer those emotions into the scenes through the techniques described above.

There is, of course, a lot more to emotional resonance, including how character, plot, and theme all tie together to create an overarching emotional experience. If you would like to learn more about big-picture aspects of emotion, I highly recommend Donald Maass’s The Emotional Craft of Fiction. I’ve read a lot of books on writing craft, and this one remains one of my favorites.

My other recommendation is to study books that had particular emotional resonance for you. What is it about them that caused you to become so emotionally invested? Examine them on a big-picture level of plot and character, but especially on a scene and sentence level. How did the author invoke such strong emotions? We can learn so much from careful examination of how others have successfully done this.