I Am So Mentally Unstable And I Am So Small

📝 Emotion, atmosphere and environment: A writing exercise for show-don't-tell

Before we go any further, I want to make it clear that I'm not aggressively against telling. Sometimes telling works for a whole bunch of valid reasons. If you know me at all, you'll be aware of where I stand on the issue of narrow, prescriptive writing rules (if you don't know me, hi, I despise narrow, prescriptive writing rules)

But "How do I show instead of telling?" is still a thing a lot of newer writers have difficulty with and that's what I'd like to dig into. So here's a writing exercise you could try to help build depth and atmosphere around the emotion your character is feeling...

🧠 First of all, pick an emotional experience.

For illustrative purposes, I'm going with LOSS. Then express that emotional experience in ways that can be perceived physically. The following are just suggestions, not an exhaustive list.

🎨 How could the emotion be expressed as a colour?

Grey, maybe. Slate grey. Or a muted petrol blue, perhaps.

🔊 How could the emotion be expressed as a sound?

Deep silence interrupted only by the sound of a ticking clock.

👋 How could the emotion be expressed as a physical action?

Your hand reaching to grasp for comfort out of habit and hope, fingers curling around something remembered, then dropping back to the coldness of the other side of the bed, empty.

🌄 How could the emotion be expressed as a weather condition or natural phenomenon?

The storm passed an hour ago, leaving only an occasional flurry of sleet that melts on contact with the window, sliding down the glass like tears. Outside, a tree that shed its leaves in autumn bows in tired silhouette against the halo of a single streetlight.

🏡 How could the emotion be expressed as a room?

Your nightstand holds the bottle of water you filled before trudging upstairs at midnight, your phone still plugged in even though the battery was full three hours ago, and the glasses you'll put on again as soon as you wake up after sleep eventually manages to swallow you. The nightstand on the other side of the bed holds a small tear-off calendar showing November eighteenth even though it's now January second and a book lying open and face-down with the spine sinking into itself. In the corner of the room, there's a chair with clothes carelessly draped over it a month and a half ago that you still can't bring yourself to put in the laundry. It's four o'clock in the morning and you'd give anything to hear breathing that wasn't your own.

You could try it for different emotions and different situations, in isolation and then connected to something you're in the process of writing.

How could anger, for example, be expressed differently in an office environment compared to a wilderness landscape? How could joy be shown in summer versus winter? How could fear be embodied in high fantasy compared to cyberpunk?

If relating environments to emotions doesn't click for you straight away, could you focus on single-sense experiences for a while? What colour is regret? What does anticipation taste like?

If you have synesthesia (hello, fellow synesthetes!) this could be a wild ride, but hopefully it'll also be fun and useful for anyone having difficulty connecting to the idea of show-don't-tell.

Happy writing! 💜

I can be shaped by more than the things that hurt me

Highkey was inspired n wrote some lyrics, hope you don't mind??? can't do melodies for shit but uhh i think this is nice for being written in 10 minutes lol

the scripture goes like this: be sure to fear God;

He is good. christianity and catholicism: creature,

holy, human. oh, joyous line. oh, joyous life.

arms up for celestial beings, divinity abound,

heart wide and smile big and the priest prays,

his hands in yours, and the church cross stands

before the sunrise, unbowed in the face of adversity

God's going to murder america and let me tell you why:

please, take a seat, you're going to need it, little bad guy.

God's going to murder america and let me tell you why:

sky's so high in montana, mountain cliff and clouds cry

God's going to murder america and let me tell you why:

the scripture goes like this: be sure to fear God;

He is good. christianity and catholicism: creature,

holy, human. be sure to conform, else they won't

accept you into the kingdom of heaven. oh, joyous.

joyous line, joyous life. arms up for celestial beings,

divinity abound in the farms i raised myself on,

sun setting on fields of my own making; conformity.

God's going to murder america and let me tell you why:

please, take a seat, you're going to need it, little bad guy.

God's going to murder america and let me tell you why:

sky's so high in montana, mountain cliff and clouds cry

God's going to murder america and let me tell you why:

the scripture goes like this: be sure to fear God;

He is good, and He'll kill you if you don't pray

in the morning, believe so much He sucks out your

soul. conformity in the face of adversity so you can't

fight back-- don't worry, it'll be alright, this is your

promise not to burn in damnation. don't make Him

punish you, don't be gay, don't question, don't worry

be sure to fear God because He put His roots in our

family's tractor and now if we don't listen and pray,

hearts wide and smiling, He'll send the priest to stick

a knife in our sister josie who went and got an abortion,

and be sure to fear God because He'll kill cousin georgie

who's not allowed to use the pronouns she (he) wants

and be sure to fear God because God is good; suicide's

not allowed in this land of divinity: conformity in the face of adversity. God is good, God is good, God is good.

God's going to murder america and let me tell you why:

please, take a seat, you're going to need it, little bad guy.

God's going to murder america and let me tell you why:

sky's so high in montana, mountain cliff and clouds cry

God's going to murder america and let me tell you why

Me, trying to explain my obsession with southern gothic and weird alt country: look I don’t know why, but if a song is acoustic, in a minor key, and about murder, god, or america, i just go absolutely batshit

We’re not heroes. We’re from Finchley.

insp.

been seeing a couple zero day inspired poems so. throwing my hat into the ring

deer

㋡🥀

i don't usually headcanon sexualities bc i think that's a bit constricting to put on a fictional character but also here me out: bi alex, and aggressively-an-ally straight kyra in a relationship. you say something homophobic and your online bank account squeals in terror.

I wish to hear the apostles theory

one of my absolute favorite details in the "prince caspian" movie is the moment where caspian shows the siblings the stone table, and everything is lit up. lucy is the only one of her siblings to approach the stone table, and the other three do not follow until she's right up against it. she's the only sibling that we see who actually sits on the table in the following war council scene. she's almost laying down on the table, completely content to sit there, but we never see her siblings sitting on the table or on the steps of the table. in the war council scene, susan and edmund are sitting on the columns on either side of the table while peter is talking. (i will very much be making a separate post about that one scene bc there is SO much there that i need to talk about)

the only time we see one of the siblings sitting at the table with lucy is after the attempted resurrection of the white witch, and peter sits with lucy. however, he only does so after she pulls him over.

it's one of my favorite details both in the books and in the movies, that lucy's siblings never once are shown to be jealous or angry at her closeness with aslan. there's an understanding there, that, while they're all aslan's chosen and the kings and queens of the prophecy, lucy is aslan's dear one. with the table, there's an immediate, unspoken thing amongst the siblings that if any of them have the right to sit on the table, it's lucy

love this

your online pets are worried about Y2K