How to Dig Deep to Show Your Character’s Thoughts & Emotions

One of the reasons I love reading fiction is the opportunity to jump into someone else’s point of view and experience their reactions to story events right along with them. I strongly believe this is what causes so many readers to lament that “the book was better than the movie” in most cases. 

Readers crave that connection with your characters—particularly your main character—so, as writers, it’s in our best interests to utilize these opportunities to do so to our advantage. One of the comments I regularly write as a developmental editor is encouraging the writer to “dig deep” and “show us your character’s thoughts and emotions here.”

Digging deep can be difficult, especially in early drafts. And this makes sense—as we work through multiple drafts, we get to know our characters better and better, so it’s fair that in our early drafts, we tend to gloss over those moments where we can ultimately dig deeper to really get into our characters’ heads. But as you work your way through revisions, I highly encourage you to look for moments where you can dig deep to really build connections between your characters and your readers and use those to your full advantage.

So, how do you dig deep? Here are some suggestions to help you identify moments where you can do this and how to do it well.

Understand Your Characters

First, it’s important to recognize that you can’t dig deep into a character’s thoughts if you only know them superficially. This is where many writers struggle. They have a vague idea of who their character is, but the details are still blurry, so when they try to dig into their thoughts and feelings, they feel vague and blurry.

The best thing you can do for your story is to truly get to know your characters, especially those central to your plot. Spend time constructing their backstory and fully exploring their personality traits. Even if these details aren’t outlined explicitly within your manuscript, if you know these things, it will make it much easier to get into your character’s head and craft a unique, realistic, and compelling reaction to the story events that unfold.

Along with digging into your character’s backstory and details about their personalities, spend time defining your character’s motivations. The way characters respond to story events are largely dependent on their specific motivations and how the story event impacts their goals. This is another place where I see writers flounder— they don’t truly understand what it is their characters want and why they want it. Getting clear on this and keeping it at the forefront of your mind as you consider their reactions as the story progresses will help your characters feel authentic to readers and allow them to truly connect with them and root for them to succeed.

Internal Monologue

One of the biggest advantages books have over movies is our ability to utilize internal monologues. While some movies use this technique with a voice-over narrator, fiction allows us to spend even more time in our character’s thoughts, which allows readers to fully connect with the character.

The key to effective internal monologue is to not overdo it. If you give readers every mundane thought that runs through your character’s head, they’ll likely grow bored, and they won’t be able to sort through all the thoughts to identify those that are most pertinent to the story.

Instead, use internal monologue to show the character’s reactions to key story moments. Use it to show a character’s thought processes that lead them from one thought to another so readers can follow along and understand the character’s actions. Internal monologue can also help clarify thoughts or emotions the character may intentionally be hiding from someone else in the scene. Using internal monologue in these ways allows the reader to fully understand what’s happening inside your character’s head and fully connect with them and the story.

Show, Don’t Tell

Show, don’t tell is advice so often given to writers that it almost feels cliched, but it really is one of the most effective ways to dig deep into your character’s mind and allow readers to connect with them. Placing emphasis on showing over telling is what lets readers feel like they’re experiencing the story alongside your characters rather than being told about it. Effective showing lets readers feel as though they’re experiencing the story as well.

While there are certainly moments where telling is necessary or even the best choice (we don’t need every minute detail dramatized if it’s not integral to the overall story), choosing to dramatize pivotal story moments will allow your readers to connect with your characters in a way that summarizing simply can’t. Readers connect with characters over the small details, not an overall situation. For example, if your story is about a woman trying to get pregnant, your reader is less likely to connect with your protagonist if you tell them she went for a doctor’s appointment with a fertility doctor and he told her the issues could be x, y, or z, than if you dramatize that appointment and show us her reactions (internal and external) to each of the doctor’s thoughts, hypotheses, and recommendations. They’ll connect better with the character if you show us the specific reasons she wants to be a mother rather than if you simply say “she’d always wanted to be a mom.” Those reactions and motivations are where readers will find pieces of themselves and, therefore, feel a connection to your protagonist.

Body Language and Action Beats

Unlike movies, writers have the added challenge of painting a picture of what’s happening for their audience. While as the author of a story we tend to have a clear vision of where everyone is in a scene and what they’re doing, if we don’t include this on the page somehow, our readers will be left reading dialogue and internal monologue without any real sense of what the scene looks like.

Body language and actions beats are useful in helping readers visualize a scene, but they’re also good ways to really show a scene and convey deeper thoughts and emotions for your characters. Our character’s body language and the things they do within a scene can be incredible clues for the reader in understanding their thoughts and emotions about what’s happening within the scene. For example, if a character replies to someone, “That’s fine,” the reader will interpret that to mean something different if the character also smiles and nods emphatically than if they lean back in their chair and cross their arms.

Digging deep into our characters’ thoughts and emotions is one of the best ways to help your readers truly connect to your characters and invest in their stories, but knowing how to do that can sometimes be challenging. I hope these suggestions help you to start considering how you can dig deeper within your own manuscript to highlight your characters thoughts and emotions in a compelling way.

If you’re really struggling with this, I can help! As part of a developmental edit, I look for specific areas where digging deep would be useful and beneficial in helping to strengthen the story and the readers’ connection with your characters. If you’re interested in learning more about developmental editing, check out my services page here or contact me with questions or for availability.