Alternative Ways to Describe Character Reactions

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

This week's Refresher Friday takes an updated look at ways to keep your emotional descriptions fresh. Enjoy!

I frequently receive questions about finding good alternative ways to use common reaction/emotion words. He smiled. She gulped. He frowned. She cringed. (Actually, that’s a story right there, isn’t it? He sounds like a stalker to me) Anyway…

These words get used a lot because they’re good words and get the point we're trying to make across. Smiling to show happiness, frowning to show displeasure, gulping to show fear. But after a while, characters reacting to the same emotions the same way over and over feels repetitive.

However, switching it up too much can lead to overwriting. If a character never smiles, but beams, smirks, grins, curls a lip, corners of the mouth rise, and all the other various ways we write to say "smile," it can feel awkward. Like "said," "smiled" and the like are fairly invisible, so while readers do notice them, they don't tend to stick out unless they are too many of them.
Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com