June 4, 2024 by BECCA PUGLISI
The single tear trickling down the cheek.
A kiss that leaves one’s knees weak.
The grin that stretches from ear to ear.
Yawn
Oh, excuse me. I almost fell asleep there.
Why Readers Hate Clichéd Emotional Responses
Clichés in writing are frowned upon because they’re easy; they’re the sign of a writer who chooses to go with the first idea that comes to mind rather than digging deeper to find the exact phrase to suit the character and scene. They don’t contribute to a unique authorial voice or say anything about who the character is as an individual. Clichéd emotional responses are particularly yawn-worthy because they literally could apply to anyone.
Readers come to each story with different purposes—to be entertained, informed, or to escape the real world, just to name a few. But regardless of why they open up a book, they all have something in common: readers all want to be engaged, to lose themselves in the story world. And the best way to make that happen is to get them feeling as they’re reading.
Consider the stories you’ve read that were thoroughly engrossing, that you couldn’t put down. My bet is that your emotions were engaged along with the character’s. When she was in danger, your own heartbeat increased. When she experienced insecurity, you felt that twinge of uncertainty in your gut. Your spirits lightened just a bit at the moment of revelation, when she finally recognized the changes she had to make to achieve her goal.
When our character’s feelings are clear and logical, they trigger the reader’s emotions, making it harder for them to put the book down. Character emotion is, in my opinion, the most effective and longest lasting hook in our bag of tricks, so it’s imperative that we get it right in our stories. And clichés that we’ve seen a million times or overuse in our own writing just don’t get the job done.
Each character, like each person, is unique, so their emotional responses should make sense for them individually. Here’s how you can make sure that happens in your story.
Study People
Emotional clichés are common because we’re so familiar with them; we’ve seen and heard them a million times. To move past them and expand your emotional vocabulary, you just need more ideas for how various feelings can be expressed. This is why Angela and I started The Emotion Thesaurus, so we’d have more ideas to fall back on. Here are some of our favorite ways to gather that emotional data.
Watch Other People. What do the kids at the park do when they’re excited? What’s happening to that woman’s body when she’s annoyed? What’s going on with her face, her hands, her shoulders, her posture? Watching others can be tricky because you don’t want to be creepy about it. But good writers are often a little nosy. Hone those observation skills and notice what happens with other people when they’re experiencing certain emotions.
Better yet, Start with Yourself. Think about what physically happens when an emotion comes on. Take note specifically of the internal reactions, since you can’t study those in other people. What’s happening in your gut, in your muscles, to your pulse and breathing? Where does your mind go?
Analyze Books and Movies. Actors have to convey a character’s emotions believably; it’s what they get paid to do. So movies and TV shows can be a great resource. They’re also easy because we can rewind them or pause to make notes. Yes, literal notes. When you’re watching a movie or reading a book and you see emotions being conveyed uniquely, get out the notepad or laptop and write those examples down. Then you can examine them later to see how the author or actor was able to express the emotion so clearly.
Studying the emotional reactions of others will give you more ideas so you won’t have to rely on the ones you tend to overuse. Then, when you’ve got a good list of brainstorming options, make your character’s response realistic by individualizing it. To do that, you’ll need to know a few things about him or her.
Know Your Character
Personality plays a huge part in how someone conveys emotion. A flamboyant person is going to respond differently than someone who is timid. Likewise, someone who is easygoing will have different reactions than a high-strung character. So it’s important to identify your character’s dominant traits, since they will dictate many of their emotional responses. For help identifying those, check out our downloadable Character Pyramid and Character Attribute Target Resource from our Tools and Worksheets page.
Another factor that plays into this has to do with emotional range. Picture it as a straight line, with RESERVED on one end and DEMONSTRATIVE on the other. On a normal day, when it comes to emotional responses, where does your character fall on this spectrum? Is she pegged at one end? Right in the middle? Leaning toward one side or the other?
The answer to this question will provide you with a baseline for how your character will react so you can write her consistently, enabling readers to become familiar with her responses. That baseline will also help readers see when something is “off”—say, if the character is hiding her true feelings, or when she has a big, overblown reaction to something trivial. Unexpected responses will act like red flags, letting the reader know that something important is going on and they need to pay attention.
A third thing you want to figure out for your character is whether she tends to fight, flee, or freeze in times of stress. These are the common psychological responses to real or perceived threats. Characters often feel vulnerable when their feelings are triggered, and their natural tendency in this area will determine their emotional response to some stimuli.
Use Dialogue
Every character talks and interacts with others in their own way. Volume, tone, timbre, speech patterns, dialect, word choices, and other elements will be specific to him or her. Nonverbal habits will be present as well, since body language always plays a part in our conversations. But these verbal and physical cues will shift with the character’s emotions. When it comes to dialogue, think about how her voice and speech will change when she’s angry, excited, or sad. Make note of those differences and apply them when the specific feeling hits, and the reader will be able to easily track the character’s emotions throughout the story.
To bring it all together, let’s take one situation and show how different characters might respond. Let’s say we have a teen-aged heroine who is being confronted with a subject she’d rather avoid. Below is Character A’s profile, followed by her personalized response to this scenario.
Character A: Dionne
Personality: Respectful, cautious, sneaky
Emotional Range: Reserved
Fight-Flight-Freeze Response: Flight
Emotional Dialogue Cues: Speech gets short and clipped; fidgety hands; doesn’t meet people’s gaze
“So how’d the party go?”
Dionne plastered on a smile and buried herself in her Instagram feed. “Great.”
“See, I knew you’d have a good time. Who was there?”
Her mouth went dry, but she didn’t dare swallow, not with Dad watching her over his coffee mug. Despite the hour, his eyes were bright and searching, twin spotlights carving through the mocha-infused fog.
She shrugged. “The usual.” Nothing to see here. Move along.
“What about Trey? I ran into his mom at the office yesterday and she said he was going.”
“Um, yeah. He was there.” She scrolled quicker, the images blurring by.
“He sounds like a good kid. Maybe we could have him and his mom over for dinner.”
Her stomach lurched. “Oh, I don’t know.” Her phone trembled and she abandoned it, sitting on her hands to keep them still. “We don’t really hang with the same crowd.”
Dad grabbed an apple from the bowl. “Couldn’t hurt to branch out and get to know some new people.” He slid into the chair across from her.
She stood up on legs that didn’t quite want to support her. “Shoot, I just remembered. I have to finish my history paper. See you tonight?”
Halfway up the stairs, Dionne blew out a shaky breath. How could her dad be so smart at work and so stupid about people?
We see here how Dionne’s personality, emotional range, flight response, and dialogue habits all work together to paint a realistic response to a difficult situation. Now let’s look at the same scenario, but with a different character.
***
Character B: Beth
Personality: Bold, confrontational, impulsive
Emotional Range: More demonstrative than reserved
Fight-Flight-Freeze Response: Fight
Emotional Dialogue Cues: interrupts people; volume rises; defensive physical cues
“So how’d the party go?” Dad asked, sliding into a chair at the table.
Beth looked up from her phone, her heart rate kicking up a notch. “Fine.”
“See, I knew you’d have a good time. Who was there?”
She rolled her eyes. “Sarah, Allegra, Jordan—you know, the usual.”
“What about Trey? I ran into his mom at the office yesterday and she said he was going.”
“I don’t know.” She got up to dump her dishes in the sink, then leaned against the counter, arms crossed. “Maybe? There were a lot of people there.”
Dad grabbed an apple from the bowl. “He sounds like a good kid. Maybe we could have him and his mom over—”
“Jeez, Dad!” He quirked an eyebrow, so she lowered her voice even though she totally wasn’t yelling. “Stop pushing. He’s not my type.”
“How do you know?” He rubbed at a bruised spot on his apple. “Couldn’t hurt to branch out—”
“He’s not my type, okay?” She barked out a laugh. “I literally could NOT be less interested.” Especially after last night.
He stared at her, so she glared back at him until he sighed and held up his hands in surrender. “Point taken. I won’t bring it up again.” He kissed her on the top of the head on his way out. “See you tonight.”
He was halfway up the stairs before Beth blew out a shaky breath. How could her dad be so smart at work and so stupid about people?
***
Same situation. Two different reactions. This is how you take your character’s emotional responses to the next level. By spending a little extra time on the front end to get to know who your character is, it’s much easier to personalize their reactions. The end result will be characters that ring true for readers, who are then willing to participate in an emotional journey that carries them further into your story.
Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.
Katherine's Chronicle 