You’ve heard it over and over: Show, don’t tell. Well, I agree with that sentiment when it comes to important emotional scenes. Fiction, nonfiction, doesn’t matter. If you want to stir your readers, learn to show powerful emotions.
As I thought about this blog, though, I figured you all don’t need yet another how to. Instead, I want to challenge you to share the most powerful emotion you felt this week. And see if we can tell what the emotion is.
Ground rules?
- No naming emotions. You have to give us the sense of your emotion without saying what it is.
- You have to do it in no more than five lines. Seriously, no more.
- If you share, be sure to comment on the others’ offerings to let them know what emotion you got from what they wrote.
Okay? I’ll start.
He was back! Sun glinting on his red crown, wings battering the air with fierce determination as he zipped this way and that, performing daredevil aerial maneuvers to protect his feeder from intruders. She leaned back in her chair, not even trying to stop her grin. Oh! How she loved watching hummingbirds.
Your turn!
[Photo by Karen Ball]