How to Put Readers in Your Character’s Skin

Readers want to feel what characters feel. In fact, brain science tells us that what draws readers into stories is a sense of emotional connection with the characters. This is the key that allows these readers to experience your story as if they were in it.

It’s a writer’s job to facilitate this connection between readers and characters through the use of Show, Don’t Tell. By showing readers what a character thinks and feels through their internal processing, they’ll naturally engage more deeply with your story!

What is ‘Show, Don’t Tell’?

Show, Don’t Tell (SDT) is the key to drawing readers into a story so much they forget the outside world. At its core, this technique is about showing readers what’s unfolding in a story by putting them in the action of a scene, rather than summarizing or “telling” the reader what happened in exposition.

On top of using SDT to put readers into the story’s unfolding action, showing what matters to characters is essential to developing connection and engagement with your readers. Use a character’s internal processing—or their inner thoughts, feelings, and emotions—to show readers what matters to them.

But wait… isn’t that telling?

There’s lots of writing advice out there that instructs writers to avoid sharing—or oversharing—what goes on inside a character’s head for fear of “telling.” This advice cautions that feelings should be explained through description alone, or that these thoughts are irrelevant or unimportant. As professional editors, we’ve seen many writers who actually edit internal processing out of their stories—all because they think it’s “telling” instead of “showing.”

This couldn’t be farther from the truth!

In reality, inner thoughts and emotions allow us to experience what is happening to the characters as it’s happening on the page. When this reasoning happens in real time, it’s part of the in-scene action.

As Lisa Cron explains in Wired for Story, “When your protagonist’s reaction is up close and personal, it catapults us into his skin, where we become ‘sensate,’ feeling what he feels, and there we remain throughout the entire story.”

That is the goal of Show, Don’t Tell.

Wield Internal Processing With Skill

Effective “showing” uses internal processing to show readers:

• What the story’s events mean to characters
• And why characters make certain decisions.

Let’s discuss those two concepts before diving into an example…

This post was published as a guest post on TheNovelSmithy.com!

To keep reading the rest of the post, head over to TheNovelSmithy.com. You don’t want to miss it! We break down examples of internal processing in a scene from Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi to show you how and why it works!