Hey everyone,
I'm writing an existential psychological horror story, and I need advice on how to write emotions because I realize in my draft that I often ruin the emotional moments in my novel. The three biggest issues I've noticed are overexplaining emotions, underexplaining emotions, and double-telling (showing, telling, and interpreting). I don't know how I can make the reader feel the emotions.
Thanks in advance.
Hey everyone,
I'm writing an existential psychological horror story, and I need advice on how to write emotions because I realize in my draft that I often ruin the emotional moments in my novel.
The three biggest issues I've noticed are overexplaining emotions, underexplaining emotions, and double-telling (showing, telling, and interpreting). I don't know how I can make the reader feel the emotions.
Thanks in advance.
Hey everyone! My brain constantly throws out random ideas for plot twists, foreshadowing, prose lines, quotes, character moments, etc. In the moment (usually at 3 AM), I’m convinced I’ve just stumbled onto something brilliant. But when I revisit it later with fresh eyes, I'm in doubt.
So I’m curious: How do you decide if an idea is actually good other than the plot? Do you have a personal checklist or process for evaluating things like dialogue, imagery, thematic resonance, or stylistic choices?
Thanks in advance.
I would love to see your feedback and would you like to continue this novel. Thank you in advance:-
“Ouch!
What the—My head is killing me!”
The bizarre dream filled with murmurs shattered instantly. The headache arrived before consciousness did.
He tried to turn over, hold his head, and sit up, but his legs refused to budge.
“It’s pretty heavy…“
Like something behind his eyes was pushing outward, testing the boundaries of his skull to see if they’d give.
He lay still for a moment and calmed down. He got a flood of memories as he had been sitting across from a man with his face.
He was twenty-four years old and technically fine.
That had always been the important part… Technically fine.
He had a room, a job, A water stain in the corner (he'd been meaning to report for six months), and a phone with a cracked screen he kept meaning to fix.
His mother called every Sunday. His father said good, good to everything, regardless of content. Once Merlyn had told him he thought he was disappearing, and his father had said good, good and asked if he had eaten.
So yes still technically fine.
There was one thing. Had been since he was a child. A half-second gap between doing something and realizing he was the one doing it.
Later, there would be a name for it. Back then, it was just the gap.
He had assumed everyone felt it and simply didn’t mention it. The way everyone was always, quietly, a little bit aware of dying.
When Aurora said you seemed fun earlier, he said that was a different version, and she laughed, and he let her think it was a joke.
He stepped back from the edge and said let's go, and they climbed down, and the night ended the way nights did — in increments, in goodbyes, in the sharper kind of loneliness that came specifically after being around people.
“Delivering the version of yourself people are most comfortable receiving. Not fake but just edited.” Merlyn thinks as he stood a few feet back, watching.
Below them, ten million people performing being alive with varying degrees of conviction. The city did not care. The city continued after all.
The roof had been Nate's idea. Nate used the word profound the way someone used a word they'd read but never felt.
There were four of them — Nate, a girl named Aurora who laughed before jokes landed, a fourth person whose name Merlyn lost by the time they reached the top.
Aurora took photos. The fourth person filmed. Nate spread his arms at the edge and said “This is what it's about, man. No one remembers parties which are safe. They remembers once where you can die a little.”
Merlyn stood a few feet back, watching as he smiles to him and others.
Nate came over and put an arm around him. “Good night, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Good night, man.”
The city exhales into dusk, its edges softened by relief. Streetlights flicker on, casting gentle halos over wet pavement, the world rinsed clean by rain and respite.
He left and was sitting at the subway waiting for his train to arrive when he saw a man who sat beside him.
Merlyn was four stops past his own before he noticed he hadn't moved.
He'd been sitting across from a man with his face.
Same jaw. Same hands. The particular way of holding stillness like it was expensive. The man had ridden two stops, stood up, and left without once looking at him — and Merlyn had stayed frozen in his seat, heart hammering against his ribs, while the subway carried him somewhere he hadn't intended to go.
Then the cold came, spreading from his center outward, numbing his fingertips against the plastic subway seat.
The man sat across from him, four feet of fluorescent-lit space between them, he seemed not to care as he scrolled on Facebook.
Same crack. Same corner.
Merlyn couldn't swallow. Couldn't look away.
His whole body had gone very still in the particular way of something trying not to be seen by a predator, which made no sense, which his brain noted and then ignored completely.
Two stops ago, Merlyn had been technically fine.
The man looked up but not at Merlyn. At the map above the doors.
But for a moment less than a second his eyes passed through Merlyn's space without recognition but as a soft blur. Without any spark of shared horror.
As if Merlyn were the reflection. The copy. The version that didn't quite render.
The train slowed as that copy stood.
Merlyn's body moved before his mind caught up. He was on his feet, pushing through the doors right behind the man, heart hammering against his ribs. The platform was nearly empty.
Fluorescent lights buzzed too bright, too real. The man walked ahead with Merlyn's gait that slight hesitation in the left step.
"Hey."
The man didn't turn.
The man moved with purpose, heading for the stairs that led to the east exit. The one Merlyn never used because it put you three blocks from where you needed to be. The man used it.
By the time Merlyn reached the street, the cold had reached his teeth. He stood at the top of the stairs, scanning the avenue.
***
Four a.m.
The city was in its shallow sleep, garbage trucks and delivery vans and the occasional insomniac in a too-long coat.
The man was half a block away, turning left onto Merlyn's street.
Merlyn sat up, the memory surfacing, three weeks old and impossible to shake.
He still didn’t know what to make of it.
On the ride back, the memory lodged itself somewhere beneath his ribs: cold and weighty, filling a hollow he hadn’t realized was there.
That happened every morning nowadays.
For exactly three seconds, the world would be normal.
He had read about this somewhere. Pareidolia. The brain finding faces in noise, patterns in coincidence. A stress response. Completely ordinary.
He got up and washed his face without looking at the mirror, which he only noticed he'd done when he reached for the towel and caught his reflection sideways — and had to take a moment to place it.
His own face. The jaw, the slight asymmetry, the expression that had settled into something like mild disappointment sometime around nineteen and apparently decided to stay. Familiar, once he looked at it long enough. He dried his hands.
It was fine. It just took him a second to recognize it.
As a new novel writer, I'm wondering if my first chapter is good enough or not, which will make the reader read the next chapter, so please give feedback and thank you in advance:-
“Ouch!
What the—My head is killing me!”
The bizarre dream filled with murmurs shattered slowly. The headache arrived before consciousness did.
He tried to turn over, hold his head, and sit up, but they refused to budge.
“It’s pretty heavy…“
Like something behind his eyes was pushing outward, testing the boundaries of his skull to see if they’d give.
He lay still for a moment and calmed down. He got a flood of memories as he had been sitting across from a man with his face.
He was twenty-four years old and technically fine.
That had always been the important part… Technically fine.
He had a room, a job, A water stain in the corner (he'd been meaning to report for six months), and a phone with a cracked screen he kept meaning to fix.
His mother called every Sunday. His father said good, good to everything, regardless of content. Once Merlyn had told him he thought he was disappearing, and his father had said good, good and asked if he had eaten.
So yes still technically fine.
There was one thing. Had been since he was a child. A half-second gap between doing something and realizing he was the one doing it.
Later, there would be a name for it. Back then, it was just the gap.
He had assumed everyone felt it and simply didn’t mention it. The way everyone was always, quietly, a little bit aware of dying.
When Aurora said you seemed fun earlier, he said that was a different version, and she laughed, and he let her think it was a joke.
He stepped back from the edge and said let's go, and they climbed down, and the night ended the way nights did — in increments, in goodbyes, in the sharper kind of loneliness that came specifically after being around people.
“Delivering the version of yourself people are most comfortable receiving. Not fake but just edited.” Merlyn thinks as he stood a few feet back, watching.
Below them, ten million people performing being alive with varying degrees of conviction. The city did not care. The city continued after all.
The roof had been Nate's idea. Nate used the word profound the way someone used a word they'd read but never felt.
There were four of them — Nate, a girl named Aurora who laughed before jokes landed, a fourth person whose name Merlyn lost by the time they reached the top.
Aurora took photos. The fourth person filmed. Nate spread his arms at the edge and said “This is what it's about, man. No one remembers parties which are safe. They remembers once where you can die a little.”
Merlyn stood a few feet back, watching as he smiles to him and others.
Nate came over and put an arm around him. “Good night, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Good night, man.”
The city exhales into dusk, its edges softened by relief. Streetlights flicker on, casting gentle halos over wet pavement, the world rinsed clean by rain and respite.
He left and was sitting at the subway waiting for his train to arrive when he saw a man who sat beside him.
Merlyn was four stops past his own before he noticed he hadn't moved.
He'd been sitting across from a man with his face.
Same jaw. Same hands. The particular way of holding stillness like it was expensive. The man had ridden two stops, stood up, and left without once looking at him — and Merlyn had stayed frozen in his seat, heart hammering against his ribs, while the subway carried him somewhere he hadn't intended to go.
Then the cold came, spreading from his center outward, numbing his fingertips against the plastic subway seat.
The man sat across from him, four feet of fluorescent-lit space between them, he seemed not to care as he scrolled on Facebook.
Same crack. Same corner.
Merlyn couldn't swallow. Couldn't look away.
His whole body had gone very still in the particular way of something trying not to be seen by a predator, which made no sense, which his brain noted and then ignored completely.
Two stops ago, Merlyn had been technically fine.
The man looked up but not at Merlyn. At the map above the doors.
But for a moment less than a second his eyes passed through Merlyn's space without recognition but as a soft blur. Without any spark of shared horror.
As if Merlyn were the reflection. The copy. The version that didn't quite render.
The train slowed as that copy stood.
Merlyn's body moved before his mind caught up. He was on his feet, pushing through the doors right behind the man, heart hammering against his ribs. The platform was nearly empty.
Fluorescent lights buzzed too bright, too real. The man walked ahead with Merlyn's gait that slight hesitation in the left step.
"Hey."
The man didn't turn.
The man moved with purpose, heading for the stairs that led to the east exit. The one Merlyn never used because it put you three blocks from where you needed to be. The man used it.
By the time Merlyn reached the street, the cold had reached his teeth. He stood at the top of the stairs, scanning the avenue.
4 a.m.
The city was in its shallow sleep, garbage trucks and delivery vans and the occasional insomniac in a too-long coat.
The man was half a block away, turning left onto Merlyn's street.
***
Merlyn sat up, the memory surfacing, three weeks old and impossible to shake.
He still didn’t know what to make of it.
On the ride back, the memory lodged itself somewhere beneath his ribs: cold and weighty, filling a hollow he hadn’t realized was there.
That happened every morning nowadays.
For exactly three seconds, the world would be normal.
He had read about this somewhere. Pareidolia. The brain finding faces in noise, patterns in coincidence. A stress response. Completely ordinary.
He got up and washed his face without looking at the mirror, which he only noticed he'd done when he reached for the towel and caught his reflection sideways — and had to take a moment to place it.
His own face. The jaw, the slight asymmetry, the expression that had settled into something like mild disappointment sometime around nineteen and apparently decided to stay. Familiar, once he looked at it long enough. He dried his hands.
It was fine. It just took him a second to recognize it.
As a new novel writer, I'm wondering if my first chapter is good enough or not, which will make the reader read the next chapter, so please give feedback and thank you in advance:-
“Ouch!
What the—My head is killing me!”
The bizarre dream filled with murmurs shattered slowly. The headache arrived before consciousness did.
He tried to turn over, hold his head, and sit up, but they refused to budge.
“It’s pretty heavy…“
Like something behind his eyes was pushing outward, testing the boundaries of his skull to see if they’d give.
He lay still for a moment and calmed down. He got a flood of memories as he had been sitting across from a man with his face.
He was twenty-four years old and technically fine.
That had always been the important part… Technically fine.
He had a room, a job, A water stain in the corner (he'd been meaning to report for six months), and a phone with a cracked screen he kept meaning to fix.
His mother called every Sunday. His father said good, good to everything, regardless of content. Once Merlyn had told him he thought he was disappearing, and his father had said good, good and asked if he had eaten.
So yes still technically fine.
There was one thing. Had been since he was a child. A half-second gap between doing something and realizing he was the one doing it.
Later, there would be a name for it. Back then, it was just the gap.
He had assumed everyone felt it and simply didn’t mention it. The way everyone was always, quietly, a little bit aware of dying.
When Aurora said you seemed fun earlier, he said that was a different version, and she laughed, and he let her think it was a joke.
He stepped back from the edge and said let's go, and they climbed down, and the night ended the way nights did — in increments, in goodbyes, in the sharper kind of loneliness that came specifically after being around people.
“Delivering the version of yourself people are most comfortable receiving. Not fake but just edited.” Merlyn thinks as he stood a few feet back, watching.
Below them, ten million people performing being alive with varying degrees of conviction. The city did not care. The city continued after all.
The roof had been Nate's idea. Nate used the word profound the way someone used a word they'd read but never felt.
There were four of them — Nate, a girl named Aurora who laughed before jokes landed, a fourth person whose name Merlyn lost by the time they reached the top.
Aurora took photos. The fourth person filmed. Nate spread his arms at the edge and said “This is what it's about, man. No one remembers parties which are safe. They remembers once where you can die a little.”
Merlyn stood a few feet back, watching as he smiles to him and others.
Nate came over and put an arm around him. “Good night, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Good night, man.”
The city exhales into dusk, its edges softened by relief. Streetlights flicker on, casting gentle halos over wet pavement, the world rinsed clean by rain and respite.
He left and was sitting at the subway waiting for his train to arrive when he saw a man who sat beside him.
Merlyn was four stops past his own before he noticed he hadn't moved.
He'd been sitting across from a man with his face.
Same jaw. Same hands. The particular way of holding stillness like it was expensive. The man had ridden two stops, stood up, and left without once looking at him — and Merlyn had stayed frozen in his seat, heart hammering against his ribs, while the subway carried him somewhere he hadn't intended to go.
Then the cold came, spreading from his center outward, numbing his fingertips against the plastic subway seat.
The man sat across from him, four feet of fluorescent-lit space between them, he seemed not to care as he scrolled on Facebook.
Same crack. Same corner.
Merlyn couldn't swallow. Couldn't look away.
His whole body had gone very still in the particular way of something trying not to be seen by a predator, which made no sense, which his brain noted and then ignored completely.
Two stops ago, Merlyn had been technically fine.
The man looked up but not at Merlyn. At the map above the doors.
But for a moment less than a second his eyes passed through Merlyn's space without recognition but as a soft blur. Without any spark of shared horror.
As if Merlyn were the reflection. The copy. The version that didn't quite render.
The train slowed as that copy stood.
Merlyn's body moved before his mind caught up. He was on his feet, pushing through the doors right behind the man, heart hammering against his ribs. The platform was nearly empty.
Fluorescent lights buzzed too bright, too real. The man walked ahead with Merlyn's gait that slight hesitation in the left step.
"Hey."
The man didn't turn.
The man moved with purpose, heading for the stairs that led to the east exit. The one Merlyn never used because it put you three blocks from where you needed to be. The man used it.
By the time Merlyn reached the street, the cold had reached his teeth. He stood at the top of the stairs, scanning the avenue.
4 a.m.
The city was in its shallow sleep, garbage trucks and delivery vans and the occasional insomniac in a too-long coat.
The man was half a block away, turning left onto Merlyn's street.
***
Merlyn sat up, the memory surfacing, three weeks old and impossible to shake.
He still didn’t know what to make of it.
On the ride back, the memory lodged itself somewhere beneath his ribs: cold and weighty, filling a hollow he hadn’t realized was there.
That happened every morning nowadays.
For exactly three seconds, the world would be normal.
He had read about this somewhere. Pareidolia. The brain finding faces in noise, patterns in coincidence. A stress response. Completely ordinary.
He got up and washed his face without looking at the mirror, which he only noticed he'd done when he reached for the towel and caught his reflection sideways — and had to take a moment to place it.
His own face. The jaw, the slight asymmetry, the expression that had settled into something like mild disappointment sometime around nineteen and apparently decided to stay. Familiar, once he looked at it long enough. He dried his hands.
It was fine. It just took him a second to recognize it.