Brain Drippings

It's my Zombie and I'll cry if I want to....

EMOTIONS

So right now I am sick...I am getting over pneumonia. And today my electricity almost got turned off...yesterday it was water which did get turned off but was turned back on quickly and right now, I just want to curl into a ball and cry. Why? because we are emotional creatures and when stress pulls us down tears allow us to release emotions that threaten to overwhelm us.

My daughter-in-law expressed one time that she felt tears were weakness...thus said the 21 year old who has never been desperate, hungry or frustrated beyond words. I try not be over-critical. It is hard though. Youth has a very different view on life, their emotions are more raw and they feel things differently. As I've aged I've become more stoic, more life will go on and nothing is so impossible. But I still get emotional.

Have you ever read a story where the emotions that the characters were expressing were unrealistic? Why did they come off that way? I once commented to an author that the emotions his characters were showing didn't seem authentic. He came back with the characters were dragons and that their emotions weren't what human emotions would be. It was a valid response, but was it really?

I watch a lot of animal planet. Baboons, monkeys, big cats, and elephants all express loss. They all show emotions when they have lost a baby. They show frustration, pain, playfulness and affection. They are not humans and don't show them they same way, but they are recognizable. When my cat lost her litter of kittens...she cried for days, trying to find them and mourning their absence. And when my dog does something he shouldn't...he definitely expresses shame.

If animals express familiar emotions then why wouldn't whatever creature you are building in your story?

In my opinion, emotions lend validity to your story. I don't think Avatar would have been as successful if we hadn't been able to relate. Can you have different societal norms? Absolutely, but emotions are primal, they come from that caveman place in our brain that tells us smile means happy, frown means sad.

There is a challenge here...show that your character is expressing emotion with out saying..."He was sad." Body language, facial expression, actions and speech can all give us the clues we need to let us know that someone is happy, sad or angry. No one really looks at someone else and says...I am happy. People just look, understand and interpret that someone is feeling that way. So how do you show, not tell emotion in a story?

Zombie Survival Tip of the Day:
Don't die...the consequences aren't pretty.