About Conveying Emotions

#1
If you've seen a thread talking about realistic character then you might know me already. Then again, a proper introduction is in order so hello again and nice to meet you. I'm currently writing 3 different stories and people who read my stories might already know my problem in several aspects upon reading them.

For now, let's get this straight. I live a life in an indifferent way for more than a decade. Often, I found emotions as something unnecessary so I always pushed aside personal opinion and simply judging the situation whether it holds benefits or not for me. This is a bit strange but I feel like it's the 'correct' way of life for me but because of that, sometimes I wondered.

"What is happiness? What is love? What is hope? What is sadness? What is despair?"

While I CAN laugh and cry, I always thought 'Ah, I'm actually not so happy/sad about this' which led me to inquire myself further in this way:

"What does happiness feels like? What kind of words can describe it?"

If words can easily transcend space and time then our planet should have been an Eden for a long time. I heard that line before but I want to ask for I don't really trust what others are saying until I myself asked for it.

How can you feel you're happy?
How can you feel you're sad?
How do you describe what pain feels like when injured?
Why do you think that feeling is what you believed as?

And so the topic goes down to the basic 'show, don't tell' but I just don't get how pain can be described with and how happiness can be described with. Ugh... why does it feel like I'm asking something philosophical if not psychological? At any rate, please help me in this matter... At this rate, I'll be stuck should I dive deeper into character development and relationship changes in my stories.
"A World Engraved with the Trails Left Behind by a Great Coward."

"A Tale of a Sword Wielding Princess."

RE: About Conveying Emotions

#2
Happiness can be described with the word "Exuberance" quite nicely. Exuberance, in this context, equates to cheerfulness, full of vitality, or being abundant in energy.

Sadness can be described as "Lifeless" which can be equated in this context as lacking in interest, spirit, or energy.

As for pain, I would say a unpleasant searing feeling, a feeling of extreme discomfort, or a feeling of danger.

RE: About Conveying Emotions

#3
"Happy" is defined by Dictionary.com as "characterized by or indicative of pleasure, contentment, or joy". It is a positive emotion that people enjoy feeling. It is characterized by high physical and mental energy and low stress. Being happy usually results in automatic smiling; conversely, smiling when not happy can physiologically improve a person's mood.
There are different types of happiness that are characterized by different excitement levels.
- Relaxed happiness, or contentment, is a low-excitement state usually associated with high mindfulness (focusing on the present moment). Examples of this can occur when doing an enjoyable hobby like cooking, reading, crafts, etc.
- Excited happiness, or joy, is a high-excitement state usually associated with pleasant surprises (like unexpected presents) or highly-anticipated events (like Christmas morning or winning a race)
- Happiness can also be induced by pleasant physical sensations. These can vary wildly, for instance delicious food, taking a hot bath, getting a massage, or having a "runner's high" from exercise. The levels of excitement for these kinds of happiness vary depending on the activity.

"Sad" is defined by Dictionary.com as "affected by unhappiness or grief; sorrowful or mournful." It is a negative emotion that people generally dislike feeling, characterized by low physical and mental energy. Compared to anger, where a person feels that an injustice has occurred and is pushed to act, sadness usually comes out of unpleasant events where the person feels helpless or there is nothing to blame. Sadness is often equated with grief (losing something or someone), for instance after a break-up, the death of a loved one, having a cherished item stolen, etc. It can also be associated with failure, like having an application to university rejected, having a business fail, being rejected by a date, etc.
Physiologically, sadness is like a temporary state of depression. It results in decreased appetite, apathy about life, lack of desire to socialize or initiate activities.

"Pain" is defined by Dictionary.com as "physical suffering or distress, as due to injury, illness, etc."
Physical pain serves two functions:
- To prevent physical injury as people learn to avoid pain
- To allow a wound to heal properly by having an injured area hurt when it is overworked or touched
Your body has specialized pain nerves (nociceptors) that activate when they sense that part of the body is being damaged. This could be due to high pressure (bruising), high temperature (burns), damage to the skin, etc. The brain then turns these signals into a localized feeling of pain.
The kind of pain sensation you feel is highly dependent on the type of injury.
- Shallow cuts, like papercuts, generally sting a lot because the skin has a lot of nerve endings. However, these kinds of injuries feel more "inconvenient" than "stressful" because they cover a very small surface area and don't pose a significant threat to one's health. Mild burns also tend to hurt a lot due to the nerve endings in the skin.
- Slightly deeper injuries that go past the skin generally hurt less than surface injuries even though they are more severe.
- Some injuries only hurt if they are bothered, for instance poking a bruise or trying to walk on a sprained ankle
Pain is usually described as "sharp" if it is highly intense and focused on a small area, like a cut. It is described as "dull" if it is less intense and distributed over a large area, like a headache or sore muscles the day after exercising.

When it comes to communicating feelings, you can never know if you're describing or experiencing the same thing as someone else. We can only come up with agreed-upon definitions and communicate that way. If something is red in colour, is is theoretically possible that someone else experiences it in a way that our brains would interpret as "green". However, since we both point at the object and agree that it's red, we're talking about the same thing despite our different experiences.

RE: About Conveying Emotions

#5
I am not sure I have read your works but for some bits and pieces, wouldn't it be just as, if not more effective to base how you write emotions on how others behave when feeling them? If you are using First-person or Third-person limited this should work for everyone but the character who's perspective you are writing because you shouldn't know for sure what they are feeling.

If you are bad at that even though trying to watch real people might be best it could be a little creepy to actually do it. So while it may not be as true to life you could also look at movies and television. After all even if they might not actually feel what they are portraying, actors are still trying to communicate such things. A lot of the time these portrayals may be cliched and/or over the top but they are also recognizable.

As to perspective characters, that I am not sure I have a helpful idea on. You could follow the lead of other writers, but that could backfire just as easily as work. I really don't have anything helpful here. Maybe focus on or imagine what makes them feel what they feel. I think of a scene where a young kid is running in a sunny field with a bubble stick and making bubbles while smiling and laughing. That screams happy to me. Why? Because it's easy for me to imagine that the kid is loved and safe, at that time they are free to run around and do what they want, and perhaps young enough to just be amazed by the fact something like a bubble exists. I'm sure there is a dark image I could paint too, but I really don't want to. It doesn't have to be something that makes you happy, but it should be reasonable to believe it's something that makes someone happy.

RE: About Conveying Emotions

#6
Writing emotion is often a question of capturing the subconscious body language that goes along with the emotion. I know of two great reference guides for helping writers to capture emotion. They are: The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Pulglisi and The Romance Writer's Phrase Book (good for all types of writing) by Jean Kent and Candace Shelton.

Some suggestions for conveying happiness from The Emotion Thesaurus:

Physical Signals:
An upturned face
Humming, whistling, singing
Raised, prominent cheek bones
Eyes that dance, sparkle, or shine
Swinging the arms while walking

Internal Sensations:
Tingling hands
Lightness in the limbs

And it goes on with mental responses, cues of long-term happiness, and etc.

If I were going to try to show happiness just off the top of my head, I might write something like:

Bristling with giddiness for no apparent reason, Diana stretched her arms up as high as they could go and breathed in the crisp autumn air.
Smiling, Tim placed his hands on his hips and surveyed all that he had accomplished.
Megan's heart filled to capacity with a positive, wholesome feeling. To show her love and appreciation to Matthew, she threw her arms around him and squeezed him as tightly as she could.
Happy and content, Jonathan leaned back in his chair and smiled.

And so on so on. Emotions don't take place in a vacuum. They generally come with body language and physical signs. This also works with a first person POV in a general sense. However, when writing in the first person, internal sensations and thought patterns play a much bigger role.

I hope this adds some insights to the conversation.
Hey guys. I'm a LitRPG author who writes action adventures stories. My website is https://www.souladonis.com.

My RR fictions are:
Souladonis: The Full LitRPG Novel, Fuuko: The Fox-Masked Hero.

RE: About Conveying Emotions

#7
Uhyaaa…… sorry and thank you for the guidances! Well, I'm labeled as 'A Cold, Heartless Bastard' by my own sister for quite some times since it stemmed from some sort of… circumstance I'd rather not talk about. This resulted in me being insensitive and inclining to put loss-gain before emotions above everything to the extreme. And I'm really indifferent about myself particularly.

Because of that, I haven't said anything other than facts judging by situation in ten years. It made me dull when thinking 'What I feel about [put words here]' since nothing came up be it in my head or by my body. Yes, I don't get stimulated by something well so I don't really care even though I was robbed. With these advices, I shall make sure they won't go to waste~
"A World Engraved with the Trails Left Behind by a Great Coward."

"A Tale of a Sword Wielding Princess."

RE: About Conveying Emotions

#8
You have the right attitude, although you kind of scare me. You sound like a supervillain in the making. Cold, heartless, emotionless - these are the same traits that I gave to the main villain in one of my novels. I dubbed him the Death Mage Overlord of War. Please don't try to enslave the human race Zenihzwei.

Just kidding. I'm sure that you're a nice guy (with a healthy amount of reasonable doubt).
Hey guys. I'm a LitRPG author who writes action adventures stories. My website is https://www.souladonis.com.

My RR fictions are:
Souladonis: The Full LitRPG Novel, Fuuko: The Fox-Masked Hero.

RE: About Conveying Emotions

#9
I suppose a good idea would be to read a play script.

In order to convey emotions an actor has to display it with their body language and tone of voice. In which case the script will usually have that written down in brackets or some other substitute.

For example death of a Salesman has very natural and progressive reactive emotions that dynamically change throughout conversations.

RE: About Conveying Emotions

#10
'mbrock' pid='278229' dateline='1437336270' Wrote: You have the right attitude, although you kind of scare me. You sound like a supervillain in the making. Cold, heartless, emotionless - these are the same traits that I gave to the main villain in one of my novels. I dubbed him the Death Mage Overlord of War. Please don't try to enslave the human race Zenihzwei.

Just kidding. I'm sure that you're a nice guy (with a healthy amount of reasonable doubt).

HA HA HA! If I were that kind of person then I wouldn't end at enslaving, but exterminating the world. Well, I won't go that far as long as my sister isn't harmed by the world and humanity's malice~
"A World Engraved with the Trails Left Behind by a Great Coward."

"A Tale of a Sword Wielding Princess."

RE: About Conveying Emotions

#11
well the thought I had to contribute is that some people forget that a character's emotions and mental state can change. They may normally be happy or dour but those are conditional states. Maybe to one character they are normally happy, but to a different one they are polarly opposite (Romanced girl A hates MC's Rival for being a douche etc)

There can also be TOO much drama. Korean manhwas are notorious for this. They will sometimes spend too much detail on the drama and accidentally make the readers see that everyone is living in a shit slinging contest world and turn off the readers by too much negativity.