To cry or not to cry, that is the question

My creative writing teacher once told me that writing about a character crying was dull and tedious. Of course, I was taken aback - especially since I had a weeping character in my story. But the truth is, she was most probably right. There are about 80 million different ideas on how to write and how to get published - and really, these days, with the power of the internet, you don't really need much experience to do either. So, I won't be offended if you take my thoughts with a sack of salt.

Emotionlism in writing is more about showing than telling. Some of the most emotional work I've read has given some wonderful descriptions of how a character looks, how they move, how they react to a situation. In addition, it's possible to 'show' sadness in ways other than tears filling eyes or expressions crossing faces. What about the way someone is holding an object? What about the way they respond to a comment? How is their posture? Are they leaning against a wall for support? Is their manner distracted or concentrated?

When writing about an emotional response to an action, consider how you would react, considering you can't see yourself crying or what the expression on your face is. Once Liz told me, re a story she was writing about Sisko, that she was thinking of him as being punched in the stomach. So how does it feel to be punched in the stomach? How do you react? Tears might be one thing, but perhaps you'd grip your stomach first and double-over. Maybe you'd slump to the floor. Maybe you'd feel weak, wobbly, maybe you couldn't breathe. All of these things are possibilities and by including detail like this, it's giving insight on how it feels to get punched in the stomach. Compare that with someone who just cries after getting punched in the stomach - we have no idea how it feels to this character that they just got socked in the gut, all we know is that this person is perhaps sad.

It's okay to give details on how people feel about certain events. It's not enough to move a character through a scene without descriptives, not only of how the scene looks but also how it feels to the character. What memories are stirred up? What triggers the memory? If it's a sad memory, how does the character react? A lot of times, I read a story and I'm thinking, "Okay, I know where this character is, I know what they're doing, I know what the room looks like, but what is this character thinking?" A lot of times, we get the wide-angled view of a character and it sterilizes the reader's opinion of what's happening. The emotionalism in a scene is sucked out and instead, you're watching a two-dimensional person go through the motions but not really understanding why.

Back to the crying thing. It's really easy to write: "A paperweight fell on Mary's foot. She cried." That really doesn't give much indication of Mary's state of mind. There's also, "A paperweight fell on Mary's feet. Tears streamed from her eyes at the pain." Trying it again: "A paperweight fell on Mary's foot. Pain shot through her and she hopped up and down, cursing herself for her stupidity." And again: "The paperweight landed heavily on Mary's foot. She yelped as pain shot through her and she fell backwards against the sofa, cursing herself for her stupidity." And one more time: "Mary yelped as the paperweight landed on her foot. She hobbled to a chair, clutching the edge of the desk for support. Thanks to her clumsy fingers, she knew she wouldn't be able to play in the soccer game on Tuesday."

People get around the crying "problem" in different ways. There's the "blinking back tears", "eyes filling with unshed tears" (though, one could argue that if tears are unshed, then they aren't tears), "bright eyes," "glistening eyes," "water pooling in eyes," "glittering eyes," "shiny eyes," etc. These are all ways of avoiding the phrase "Mary cries." No problems there, but if a someone is going to cry, the reasons and the motivations behind those tears should be clear and there ought to be more there than just waterworks. Some indication of what the character is feeling physically and mentally. The same thing goes with any other vague concept, such as love. If two characters in love, don't just tell the reader that they are - show how they interact together, how they speak, the tone of their voice and the word choice used.

That's not to say there's a problem with "telling." A lot of advice types say that writers should avoid telling at all cost and concentrate on showing. Which works to an extent, but there's a fine line. At some point, a writer's got to spell out what's going on. Perhaps, along with the glistening eyes, a character feels dismay. Telling us someone feels dismay is not "show", but the previous part of the sentence which gives us a bit of "show" makes the "telling" more palatable later on. There are different shades of info dump and vagaries - the trick is to find what works best for a writer given their particular writing style. It's a little too much to expect that there is a "one size fits all" guide to good writing.