Showing Emotion

I find so many helpful writing tips on Pinterest, and showing emotion through dialogue hasn't come as naturally to me as I thought it would as far as what the character is doing while either speaking or listening to whoever is in the scene with them. However, this post from The Writer's Handbook Tumblr blog,  who shared it from  One Stop For Writer's Pinterest board explains the way to show important emotions that for some reason haven't come easy to me.

Emotions such showing interest or disinterest in a character, showing nervousness, frustration or anger, (such as trembling or clenching their fists), sadness, etc. While I'm reading a good book for the first time, the plot itself holds my attention, which is exactly what our books should do for readers. When the writing is so well done that I barely pay attention to the grammar and writing style of the author the first time I read it, that is a story that I will read again from my writer's mind.

Increasing your plot's intensity

When my back hurts from cleaning my house, I often read one of my Writer's Digest Books. The one I'm currently reading is Creating Plot by J. Madison Davis. Click here for the link.

To increase the plot's intensity, the scenes move to more important and dangerous level as the story moves forward, while the protagonist is caught in tighter situation with the possibilities for action decreasing with each scene.

As I've plotted my time travel novel, this sentence hit me like a brick (but without the migraine :). My antagonist, Sam, wants to make a name for himself and please his father. As he plots the best course of action, he receives disturbing news and makes poor choices that lead to his becoming evil.

Once my character profiles were developed, the event that led to Sam's dark path flashed in my mind. It takes a good bit of time for me to improve my writing skills, so these great aha moments helps me write better fiction.

What are your thoughts? Do you have any great tips for increasing your novel's intensity that you care to share?

Back and Forth

I’ve been adding and deleting sections of my novel countless times, trying to create a unique story without the overused words I find, such as: was, I, took. etc.


I have a word document for the scenes I've removed, and some of these are making their way back in. Now I'm pouring over my manuscript and asking myself, is this important or just useless words to the reader? As I read more books and write/edit my book, it seems easier to find my useless words and either delete it or improve it, maybe even add an additional small but important scene. My thesaurus and dictionary have been great friends to me as I search for better words to express my characters’ reactions to their problems.

Do you either delete or improve your story countless times like me? Do you copy and paste the deleted words to a separate document?