I've been searching for an article I read years ago about getting emotions into fiction without resorting to beating hearts or other physical reactions. Having just been told again (by the judges of the
RMFW Colorado Gold contest) that my writing is lacking in emotion, I finally found it. So I'm saving it here, and figure I'll add other favorite articles to the blog, if only for my own reference.
How Fiction Writers Can Show Emotions in Their Characters in Effective Ways by C.S. Lakin
Here's my attempt to add emotion to the scene I'm writing today. Feel free to point out where I could do better (especially if you have a suggestion for how to improve!) I'd also love suggestions of books to read where the author is particularly good. s
I stopped short when a tall, brown
house materialized from the whiteness ahead. It was probably a hallucination. A
fatigue-induced dream. For hours—countless in the overcast, snowy night—I’d
been watching fruitlessly for a shelter. At first, I’d been hopeful, scanning
the hillside, barely noticing the snow deepening to cover the toes of my boots.
It had crept up the ankles as I’d sang every song I knew to keep Hana
distracted, to keep her moving forward. She had begged to stop and I desperately
wanted to, too. Lay the tarp on the snow, fold it over to cover us. Slide into
the warm, soft sleeping bags. Let our bodies rest in the cushioned warmth. But
we’d have to cover our faces, somehow, to keep the snow off. Even if we could
breathe under there, the hills were relentless—there was nowhere flat except
occasionally right on the trail, where it hadn’t washed out. Not wide enough
for three people to lie down, even if it had been a good idea to sleep outdoors
in a blizzard.
Standing still allowed me to feel the
cutting chill of snow inside the ankles of my boots. The snow was as deep as
Hana’s knees now. It might keep coming. One spring when I was a kid, a storm had
dumped eight feet of snow here in less than twenty-four hours. School had been
cancelled and I’d joined with neighborhood kids digging tunnels through the
streets. The memory of that joy froze like water sprayed into winter air,
falling through me in icy shards. We’d had a house, back then. Not with just a
fire but a furnace, with gas delivered by pipes under the house and lit automatically.
A snowstorm like that, right now, right when I’d taken my girls away from the
only safe place we’d known since the Collapse… we couldn’t even build a fire
out here.
“Wait here,” I told the girls. I
stepped one foot, then another toward the building. It didn’t disappear. I
sniffed but only got frigid air. No smoke. There was no sign that anyone was in
it. No footprints. No lights. Someone could still be inside. As I got closer, I
could see boards nailed over the windows. The front door, up a short rise of
steps softened by pillows of snow, was also boarded shut.
There was no way to tell if someone was
in there without prying off the boards. I looked back at the girls, dark
statues half-hidden by the thickly falling snow. If we didn’t go in this house,
we’d just have to find another. It would be the same there. The only way to
avoid the risk was to sleep outside. And that was risky in itself. I swallowed
hard, wondering if Hiroshi would have gone in, or made camp on the tarp,
snuggling together and making do on our own without the need for someone else’s
house. If we did that, if we could find a flat spot, would we stay warm enough?
Would we wake in the morning with five feet of snow on top of us? Or not wake
at all, drifting off into a frozen sleep, hidden under the softly undulating surface
until the snow melted and someone came across our bodies.
I slid my backpack to sit in the snow
on the porch and extracted the hatchet. I pried the blade under a board. The
nails squealed. I stopped, holding my breath for almost a minute. No sound from
inside. I just had to go for it.
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