📝 Emotion, Atmosphere And Environment: A Writing Exercise For Show-don't-tell

📝 Emotion, atmosphere and environment: A writing exercise for show-don't-tell

Before we go any further, I want to make it clear that I'm not aggressively against telling. Sometimes telling works for a whole bunch of valid reasons. If you know me at all, you'll be aware of where I stand on the issue of narrow, prescriptive writing rules (if you don't know me, hi, I despise narrow, prescriptive writing rules)

But "How do I show instead of telling?" is still a thing a lot of newer writers have difficulty with and that's what I'd like to dig into. So here's a writing exercise you could try to help build depth and atmosphere around the emotion your character is feeling...

🧠 First of all, pick an emotional experience.

For illustrative purposes, I'm going with LOSS. Then express that emotional experience in ways that can be perceived physically. The following are just suggestions, not an exhaustive list.

🎨 How could the emotion be expressed as a colour?

Grey, maybe. Slate grey. Or a muted petrol blue, perhaps.

🔊 How could the emotion be expressed as a sound?

Deep silence interrupted only by the sound of a ticking clock.

👋 How could the emotion be expressed as a physical action?

Your hand reaching to grasp for comfort out of habit and hope, fingers curling around something remembered, then dropping back to the coldness of the other side of the bed, empty.

🌄 How could the emotion be expressed as a weather condition or natural phenomenon?

The storm passed an hour ago, leaving only an occasional flurry of sleet that melts on contact with the window, sliding down the glass like tears. Outside, a tree that shed its leaves in autumn bows in tired silhouette against the halo of a single streetlight.

🏡 How could the emotion be expressed as a room?

Your nightstand holds the bottle of water you filled before trudging upstairs at midnight, your phone still plugged in even though the battery was full three hours ago, and the glasses you'll put on again as soon as you wake up after sleep eventually manages to swallow you. The nightstand on the other side of the bed holds a small tear-off calendar showing November eighteenth even though it's now January second and a book lying open and face-down with the spine sinking into itself. In the corner of the room, there's a chair with clothes carelessly draped over it a month and a half ago that you still can't bring yourself to put in the laundry. It's four o'clock in the morning and you'd give anything to hear breathing that wasn't your own.

You could try it for different emotions and different situations, in isolation and then connected to something you're in the process of writing.

How could anger, for example, be expressed differently in an office environment compared to a wilderness landscape? How could joy be shown in summer versus winter? How could fear be embodied in high fantasy compared to cyberpunk?

If relating environments to emotions doesn't click for you straight away, could you focus on single-sense experiences for a while? What colour is regret? What does anticipation taste like?

If you have synesthesia (hello, fellow synesthetes!) this could be a wild ride, but hopefully it'll also be fun and useful for anyone having difficulty connecting to the idea of show-don't-tell.

Happy writing! 💜