Emotions are a big deal in life and in writing!
When you experience happiness what do you do? What physically shows you're happy? If you don't want others to see your happiness, how do you hide it?
In writing, showing a character's emotions helps the reader connect with them and identify with what they're experiencing. How to incorporate the showing of emotions into my writing is a challenge. I imagine my responses to emotions in the past or that of others. Observing how characters in movies and TV shows react and display their emotions is another way for me to learn.
I purchased The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Expression to assist me in this. I read about this resource, and other writers recommended it. So, I used my Barnes & Noble Premium Membership combined with Mike's blood money ($ from donating blood) and ordered the most recent edition!
As a resource, it's amazing and a worthwhile purchase. The book includes one hundred thirty emotions! Each emotion has two pages of information, including a definition; physical signals and behavior; internal sensations, mental responses; acute or long-term responses; signs that this emotion is being suppressed; may escalate to & may de-escalate to (these list other emotions with the page number for each); associated power verbs; and a writer's tip. There's also a wealth of advice presented about including emotions in your writing.
I'm saving this for my editing process because I'm afraid of falling into a deep rabbit hole if I dig into it while writing. I will read through the material and study it while taking breaks from my writing. Hopefully, nuggets of information will stick with me and fall into the writing of my first drafts.
This all leads to a couple of questions for you, the reader. Do you prefer reading how the characters are acting, so you can decide what the character is feeling? Or do you prefer being told? This is the basis of the Show Don't Tell theory of writing. I wrote about Show Don't Tell in my January 2024 Blog post. Try as I might, I think I often fall into telling at times.
Writing isn't easy, but it is fun!