Why are so many writers afraid to describe their characters’ emotions?

The Drama of Feelings in Fiction

Welcome to the second instalment of Craft Work! This month, I’m examining the conundrum of whether or not to describe our character’s feelings.

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For a long time, I used to teach my writing students that they should never describe their character’s emotions. To do so, I would sometimes say, deprives the reader of the ability to bring their own emotions to the character’s experience. Yet, as time goes on, the more I write and read, and the more I teach, the more I find myself drifting away from this notion. In fact, I’ve moved so far away from it that I now think that a blanket restriction against writing emotions is simply bad writing advice.

Much work-in-progress I see observes this rule in such a way that writers craft page after page of beautifully observed writing with ‘telling’ details that hint towards some buried emotion, but requires the reader to do the work of searching for it. In fact, a lot of my own early writing could be described this way. But this is not the way most people experience life! Moreover, often writing like this suggests characters are little more than passive observers of their own life. Emotions are in fact, an extremely important way in which we understand and navigate our lives. In fact, as Aristotle told us in The Poetics, a vicarious experience of emotions by way of ‘catharsis’ is one of the key reasons we are drawn to fictions about life.