The Book on SHOW, DON'T TELL | How to Write More Visually

Facial Expressions

The face is the window to someone's emotions – expressions show (not tell) your reader what someone is thinking, how they might act, whether they're secretly in love, whether they're anxious, angry, confused – or lying.

We could 'tell' the reader what someone looks like by using various synonyms for human emotions – happy, sad, angry, annoyed, incredulous. Indeed, this is fast, and works occasionally so as to keep the plot moving at a rapid pace. But it gets boring, and doesn't give the imagination anything to grip. It's not very visual, so it's not very impactful. We could say "Trevor looked angry", but what does that look like? How does Trevor, as a unique character, display anger? What type of angry is he? How extreme is his rage? We don't know. It's a lot of missing information.

So what could you be 'showing' instead?

Thinking about the face

Facial expressions are made up of all the individual components of someone's face. It's these components that we can write about. Think about:

The skin above and between the eyebrows

Eyebrows

Eyelids

Eye direction, eye colour, bloodshot levels

Pupil dilation

Nose and nostrils

Lip shape

Teeth visible, not visible, grinding

Skin and cheek colour

Ear colour

Jaw open, jaw shut, jaw moving side to side

Whole-head angle, movement, position on the neck

Any injuries, ticks or disabilities

Spittle, tears and snot

Mouth and tongue noises

Hands touching face

Picking just a few of these to describe visually instead of leaning on common emotive words instantly improves our understanding of a character's expression. Of course, you would often combine facial expressions with other types of body language to convey a more holistic description of someone's feelings. A sad person, for instance, is often sad with their whole body, not just their face (we'll cover body language later!).

Don't forget metaphor and simile to help you further add diversity!

Examples

Excited: Betty's face lit up with an ear-to-ear grin.

Sad: Hogart slumped, tears welling in his wide, unblinking eyes.

Shocked: Terry's mouth dropped open, swinging like a loose fly catcher.

Curious: Bulbous the Mighty arched a long, slender eyebrow, looking down his nose at the dancing goblin.

Thinking: Jesse clicked her tongue, wrinkling her nose, and peered at the book.

Anger: Captain Gristle sneered, lips twisting into an ugly snarl, nostrils flaring, ears turning an angry red. He scowled so deeply it cast a black shadow over his eyes. [note the extended description. The longer we describe something for, the more emphasis we put on the emotion – thus, the more angry Captain Gristle seems]

Disbelief: Hector was stunned. He blinked once, twice, glancing about the street gawping like a fish out of water. [note the combination of a simple emotive word as well as a visual description and simile to build a complete, visual, easily-understood picture]

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