It’s Written All Over Your Face

It’s important for a fiction writer to learn how to describe human facial expressions. A person’s face is the most communicative body area, and often it reveals a character’s feelings. Amazing, isn’t it, how many things we can make our faces do! There may be as many facial aspects as there are possible mental states.

Small wonder there are so many English verbs devoted to describing a person’s mien: blanch, blush, grimace, grin, smirk, etc. It surprised me to find the Wikipedia article on Faci...