Choose Words that Characterize

Trying to convey how we feel with words can be difficult. You sit with the feeling and think about the words that attempt to express it. Nothing really does though. They come close, but something is always missing.

I’ve spent hours trying to find the right words, construct the right sentence, and make other’s feel the way I do with my words. But that’s backwards. You can’t make other’s feel what you feel. You have to call out the proper emotion from within them.

Isn’t that the same as making others feel how we feel? It’s the reverse actually. Instead of trying to make you feel how I feel, I want to bring out a particular feeling in YOU. This is all very confusing, you say.

If I am trying to get you to feel a certain way at a particular spot in my story, I automatically go to every aspect of the story to get you there. I use the setting, the weather, the body language of my characters, and dialogue. The words I choose to describe all of this call out an emotion in you.

If I want you to feel joy, I’m going to find a detail of joy in the weather that I can bring forward. I’m going to have my character notice bright and beautiful things in the setting and not the cockroach lurking in the corner. The words I use to describe the actions in the scene are going to be bouncy and colorful.

By doing this, I don’t have to tell you that my character is happy or joyful. You already know because it is in everything that is going on around the character. Even if the setting is ugly and dark, if your character notices the one beautiful element it tells the reader how your character is feeling and that your character is more of the optimistic type than pessimistic.

Get your thesaurus and dictionary out and have them ready while you are editing your first draft. If they are easily accessible, you are more likely to use them. As you build your story, chose words that do more than define and describe, choose words that characterize and color.