“I’m getting the feeling you don’t love me anymore.” Sally sat down, smiling, into her chair at the coffee shop. “I love you. I just love my friends at ACFW and MBT too,” I said from the coffee counter. Between school starting and the various writers conferences over the past two months, we’d barely had time to chat. “Prove it,” she said. “Show me the love.” “I’m here, aren’t I?” I was dressed in a football sweatshirt, wearing my Uggs and old jeans. “On my way to a football game. Doesn’t that say love?” She raised an eyebrow. “Which brings me to the topic of our conversation today – showing emotions through action. And I’m not talking about facial expressions or even physical reactions. I’m talking about […]
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Techniques for Layering Emotion into your scene: Action
By Susan May Warren on October 2, 2012 in 2. Create Your Story, b. Building a Scene, How do I write Emotions?, Truth or Dare: Conversations with an aspiring novelist, What is Storyworld, and how do I write it?
Dear Darla…
So – I just gotta tell you about Darla. I do a lot of travelling and not long ago, I was sitting in the O’Hare Airport when a woman walked into the gate area. She was in her early twenties, and carried a backpack, which she held with a whitened fist. She sat down and began to fidget in her seat, checking her watch, looking at the gate, pawing through her bag. She pulled out a book, and clutched it to her chest a moment before opening it, and pulling out a highlighter. The books said, in large black ominous letters – How to get over your fear of flying. Periodically, she wiped her hands on her jeans, and blew out a long breath, as if she’d been holding it. […]
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