Like a Kick to the Belly: Express Your Characters’ Emotions More Powerfully with Imagery
And I don’t want her to feel frightened, to feel the fear that is now tightening my muscles, tensing my spine, pulling me so taut that I’m certain I would break if touched.
—Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
I don’t know about you, but as I read that sentence, I’m practically gritting my teeth in anticipation of what’s coming next. There’s something so intensely visceral about that description of fear. I recognize the unbearably taut sensation from times I’ve felt afraid myself—like a wire being stretched tighter and tighter. Margaret Atwood’s finely wrought imagery activates that bodily memory.
She could have simply written She felt afraid. Nothing wrong with a straightforward sentence like that. But it isn’t quite as powerful, wouldn’t you agree? I don’t feel anything in particular in my body when I read the line She felt afraid. My five senses are not activated.
Emotions like fear aren’t just intangible, abstract mental states—they’re concrete physical sensations that manifest in the body. Think of the heat that floods your face when you’re nervous… the sinking feeling in your gut that comes with disappointment… the light, sparkling energy that fizzes through your limbs when you’re having a blast. These are universal human experiences that any reader will recognize in a fictional character. Heat, sinking, sparkling, light: we’re in the realm of the five senses here. Emotions are kinesthetic. They race, pulse, flow, surge in the body; squeeze us, make us tremble. Emotions have a temperature. They flush us with heat or shiver along the skin. Emotions have a weight. They weigh us down like stones or buoy us up like feathers.
The fear that is now tightening my muscles, tensing my spine, pulling me so taut that I’m certain I would break if touched.
There’s a lot of dynamic movement in that sentence: tightening, tensing, pulling, nearly breaking. The great power of Atwood’s writing stems in part from visceral, sensory descriptions like these.
Locate the emotion in the character’s body
If you aren’t in the habit of describing emotions kinesthetically, investigate your character’s body. Where does their current emotion live?
In literature as in life, the throat, chest and stomach are common sites for emotions to manifest. So are the spine and the head, and more generally, a person’s insides, their core, their entire being.
Charles Wallace felt a ripple of cold move along his spine. —Madeleine L’Engle, A Swiftly Tilting Planet
His head was in a whirl of hope and wonder. It seemed that the ring he had was a magic ring: it made you invisible! —J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
His body was throbbing with the excitement of having spoken up and being heard by Jenna. —Jonathan Franzen, Freedom
Feel free to borrow the following phrases as you please, or use them as springboards to come up with your own:
General
inside her, within her, through her
her insides
deep down, deep inside her, deep within her
in her being, in the depths of her being
at her core, at her very core, at the core of her being
The whole body
through her body, in her body, her whole body, her entire body
beneath her flesh, under her skin, across every inch of her skin
every part of her, every pore of her body
from head to toe, from end to end
her nerves, her every nerve
her senses
The throat
in her throat, in her windpipe, at the back of her throat, at the base of her throat
The chest
in her chest, within her chest, in the centre of her chest, deep within her chest
in her heart, within her heart, deep within her heart
in her ribcage, within her ribcage, behind her ribs, behind her breastbone
The stomach
in her stomach, in the pit of her stomach
in her belly
in her gut
The veins
in/through her veins
in her blood
The spine and bones
up/down/through her spine
up/down her backbone
up/down her back
at the back of her neck
in her bones
all the way down to the bone
in the marrow of her bones
The head
in her head
in her mind, in the depths of her mind
in her brain
at her temples
along her jaw
The arms and legs
to her extremities
through her limbs
right to her fingertips
down to her toes
Describe the emotion with imagery
Now that you’ve located the emotion in the body of your character, visualize the emotion—say, dread—as a physical force or substance passing through their body. Is the emotion most like water, blood, poison, light, wind? Or is it more like a stone, a snake, a cloth, a knife? Does it have a texture, a sound, a taste? Does it come in a rush or does it slowly seep in, then drain away? Does it move in a trickle or flash suddenly? Does it inch up the character’s throat, squeeze their lungs, thrum through their veins, crawl down their spine? What kind of substance is moving through your character, and how strong is that current of feeling?
Earlier, Margaret Atwood described her character’s fear as if it were a wire. Let’s look at how two other renowned writers wield the same image to express excitement and anxiety:
Every step she took, she felt as if there were a wire that lit up, a bright message travelling from her heels to the top of her skull. —Alice Munro, “What Is Remembered”
I was held tight, wound round with wire, I couldn’t breathe, and I had to run. —Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Notice the words these authors use to evoke the sensation of a wire: lit up, bright, travelling, held tight, wound round.
To build an image of your own, use words that are associated with the substance you have in mind. For instance, to express misery as a cloud, you could use words like cloud, fog, haze, settle, roll, dissipate, heavy, murky, cold.
A haze of misery settles over her heart.
Misery, murky and cold, rolls through her insides.
She feels her misery starting to dissipate.
Make an evocative comparison using like, as, as if, as though:
Misery settles over her like a heavy cloud.
Misery, murky as fog, rolls through her insides.
Her misery dissipates as if it were fog under the morning sun.
Or leave off the emotion word entirely (in this case, misery) and go for a metaphor.
A heavy fog settles over her heart.
Something murky and cold rolls through her insides.
She feels the heaviness within her start to dissipate.
A little imagery is a powerful thing. By describing your characters’ emotions as physical forces that are tense, hot, heavy, or light, things that shimmer or dwell in darkness, things that squeeze or shake, you tap into the reader’s five senses and dial up their own emotional response to the characters.
More imagery-rich descriptions of emotions from literature
Some of the most common imagery in creative writing relates to water and other liquids, fire and light, pain and attacks, electricity and weight. Think of the sea, the tides, a tsunami, a whirlpool, a bath… Coals, embers, a bonfire, a floodlight, the sun… A knife, an arrow, a wound, a needle, a blow… Lightning, shock waves, a rope, a signal, a battery… A brick, a stone, a pit, lead, gravity…
How does the emotion move through the body? What physical qualities does it take on?
Emotion as water
Haroun was filled with the shame of it, and hung his head. —Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories
The waves of regret were gentle, but I knew they would ripple on forever. –Yoko Ogawa, The Diving Pool
Her pain rolls in and out like the tide, sometimes a patter on damp sand, other times a torrent that could knock grown men off their feet. –Brando Skyhorse, The Madonnas of Echo Park
Emotion as fire or light
There’s all these sparks of happiness igniting all across my body and it’s like I’m on this new level where everything’s just fucking wonderful. —Will Davis, My Side of the Story
Amaranta was really making an effort to kindle in her heart the forgotten ashes of her youthful passion. —Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
Lyra nearly blazed with hatred, and Pantalaimon in her arms became a polecat, the most ugly and vicious of all his forms, and snarled. —Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass
Emotion as an attack or pain
Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like “maybe we should be just friends” or “how very perceptive” turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. —Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: The Kindly Ones
When I looked back, I noticed that Eunice was staring at us, her lower face covered with that amphibian smile, the grin without qualities, the grin that cut me in the softness around my heart. —Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story
I remember everything about them, and I feel like throwing up. It’s hate and fear grabbing at my stomach and sending tendrils through my whole body. —Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood
Emotion as electricity
With a jolt of panic I remember my backpack. —Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
And then without warning, a potent electric shock of happiness so violent that it seems to slice his body open from end to end. For a minute or two, all his senses are wired into this state of simple rapture. —Carol Shields, Larry’s Party
She had spent the night imagining what she would do in Lexie’s situation, every time feeling that flash of panic surge through her again from her scalp to the soles of her feet. —Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng
Emotion as a weight
My stomach suddenly felt as if I’d swallowed a rock. —R. L. Stine, Goosebumps: Let’s Get Invisible!
I slept little and ate less; grief pinned me to the bed like an anchor. —Madeleine Miller, The Song of Achilles
After the ceremony was concluded upon the present occasion, I felt all the easier; a stone was rolled away from my heart. —Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Match your imagery to your character, setting, and mood
Consider your character’s unique identity and personality where you’re selecting your imagery. If they’re a computer nerd, tech metaphors will make sense to them. If they’re a river goddess, water and nature imagery will suit them best. And if your character has a sarcastic personality, imbue their imagery with sarcasm.
Also take setting into account. If the story takes place at a high school, you might make school-related comparisons. If the scene is happening during a sunset, draw on the qualities of that sunset to express your character’s feelings. If it’s chilly outside, think of how you might infuse the temperature in your protagonist’s mental state.
Finally, keep the overall mood of the scene in mind. If the scene is high in tension and suspense, choose imagery that will build pressure. If the mood is light and playful, whimsical images are more appropriate.
The tighter the connections you make between your imagery and your story’s characters, setting, and mood, the more meaningful your imagery will feel to your readers.
Aim for brevity
Imagery can develop over a sentence or two—or it can be as succinct as a single word. Lengthy explanations risk becoming tedious or slowing down the pace of the story. Bestselling authors are skilled at crafting concise flashes of imagery that are free of superfluous words.
In the following examples, eighteen words are trimmed to ten, then to four. Both are valid options. Which one do you prefer? If you were to use this image in your story, how many words would you choose?
She feels a thick, heavy cloud of misery settle over her heart like fog on a misty morning.
She feels a thick, heavy cloud of misery settles over her heart like fog on a misty morning.
Novel study
As we’ve seen, imagery is used to great effect by expert writers, sometimes in a minimalistic fashion, sometimes more ornately. Each writer has their signature style.
Grab a novel, short story, memoir, or personal essay by a writer in your genre and scan through a couple of chapters. Consider:
What strategies does the author use to communicate the characters’ feelings? Are they straightforward and direct? Visceral and embodied? What do you notice?
What imagery did the author use to convey the characters’ emotions, if any? Water? Fire? An attack? A weight? Something else? Is this image a good fit for this particular character’s personality, this setting, and the mood of this scene?
What’s one takeaway you can apply to your own storytelling?
Over to you
Do you use a lot of imagery in your writing? Do you tend to describe emotions as embodied sensations or do you prefer a more straightforward approach? What do you find especially challenging about writing characters’ emotions? Comment below!
