🥑 characters are people too

Here’s a fundamental aspect of writing characters that people will actually read:

They have feelings.

Even a lack of emotion counts—whether your protagonist is numb from shock or Tin-Man-ing it up as a heartless automaton.

And whatever those feelings are, we as the readers wanna see them.

Your scene’s opening line is a perfect place to tee up that emotion. Whether it lingers to the end or gets wrecked halfway through, we have to start somewhere.

Here are five ways to communicate a character’s emotion with your opening line.

1. Say outright what they’re feeling. Sometimes, telling actually works.

2. Use physical sensations (e.g., wiping clammy hands on their jeans).

3. Open with a thought or a piece of dialogue that carries emotional context.

4. Use the environment to represent emotion (a technique beloved by film directors when it’s raining during a funeral).

5. Show us a contrasting emotion through the scene’s antagonist.

Try two or three of these ideas next time you’re drafting or revising a scene—then decide which one best connects you to the protagonist.

Next time: direction and misdirection.

Want feedback on your own scene starters? Reply to this email with an opening line from one of your scenes and I may use it in a future Bite.

Thanks for reading Avocado Bites!

^{Avocado Bites is a publication of Avocado Tree Press, LLC, that helps you revise your stories one bite at a time. We love working with indie and traditionally published authors on fiction manuscripts—and if that’s you, welcome to our target audience.}

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^{Addison Horner is the chief editor of Avocado Tree Press. Here’s his newsletter. It’s different but still pretty good.}