Emotion du jour: Excitement

Excitement. “I’m excited: are you excited?” “I could go for a beer.” As with just about any emotion, it’s always easiest to just say, or make the character say, what they’re feeling. But also as with any emotion, there are generally physical and verbal cues that go along with the emotion. These are what will lend “showing” to your story instead of “telling.” That’s the very definition of that oft-used literary admonition. With setting, show the character interacting with the pieces of the set; with emotion, show the character living the emotion. An easy place to start is, of course, with yourself: how do you act when you’re excited? Do you forget things, everything else except what you’re excited for? Say random bits of nonsense that pop into your mind? Laugh uncontrollably and without normal reason? Split your cheeks with grinning? And again, find ways to show this, not just tell it.

One of my most exciting experiences that I can recall vividly was going to a Switchfoot concert, back in 2005. Not only was it my first real concert (I’d been to one as a very young child that I didn’t remember, and I can recall not really being sure what was going on at the concert even while I was there), and not only was it with a band I loved, but it was in a new city, in a tiny little venue with no assigned seating. It was about an hour drive into the city, and my friend and I listened to our favorite Switchfoot songs the entire way in. We get there early (afraid as we were of traffic snarls) and discover there is not seating assignments because there is no seating: the place was a club of sorts, perhaps one hundred feet long and maybe thirty feet wide. So for $25 bucks a pop, we got to stand fifteen feet away from our favorite band as they rocked out. I’ll never forget the moment when their bassist dropped into center stage and began the opening chords to Politicians.

That was probably the closest thing I’ve had to a condensed, real-life experience of a book: intro (we’re going to a concert), rising action (building up the excitement as we neared the city, queuing up our favorite songs), climax (discovering we were fifteen feet from the stage, and then the rest of the rocking evening), and dénouement  (driving back home that night).

It was such a new experience for me that I didn’t realize they had “openers.” So when my friend leaned toward me early in the concert and asked: “Who are these guys?” I laughed, thinking he was being facetious when in fact I was just ignorant. It was only later that I realized: “Hey, these guys don’t look like Switchfoot.” Then I felt really stupid.

If you’re wondering, no I don’t have a fictional story today. I’m slacking, sorry. Hopefully a little instruction is nearly as good (maybe better?) than a story. Still look for a piece of fiction on Thursday. See you then.