Emotion

Emotion is a hard thing for me to write, though it is definitely worth taking the time to write well because unrealistic emotion ruins the best story.

One thing which could help with emotion is to show the character’s thoughts as well as make sure the reader understands the villain’s emotional reason for wanting to kill the MC. If they can connect or feel bad for the villain (I’m not sure if that is your intent or not) even while not agreeing with him, it would give the scene more depth.

Another thing which is very helpful is to detail nonverbal cues. The tremble of a voice; the clenching of a fist or the rigid tightness of a jaw. Different emotions have different cues; I’ve found the Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi a great help in listing out the different actions which go with emotions. But the nonverbal is as important as the verbal in a scene like what you seem to be talking about.

@warrioroftherealm

Emotional scenes begin far before the actual scene in most instances. We know this to be true in our own lives. Let’s take a look at this.

Scene 1: Random girl smacks guy in face.
That’s a little bit hurtful.

Scene 2: Girlfriend smacks guy in face.
Much more hurtful.

Scene 3: Girlfriend who guy has been trying all week to comfort after a trauma in her life smacks him in the face.
Most hurtful of all.

Now if we watched a clip of all these scenes, they would look almost exactly the same. The difference is the backstory. That’s where I recommend starting. If your backstory clearly shows the reasons why your character should be emotional, it will be very easy to sound convincing when he is.

The other suggestion I have is subtlety. Taking the example in scene 3 above, having the guy break into tears would convey the emotion (though it would be unrealistic), but what would work even better would be him biting his lip, turning away, and hardly speaking to anyone for a whole week.