Finding the emotions of a scene

Verbs are emotive words. The English language has all sorts of nuances tied up in almost every word – an author’s job is to understand and play with these nuances.

Photo by Gene Devine on Unsplash

Verbs are emotive words. The English language has all sorts of nuances tied up in almost every word – an author’s job is to understand and play with these nuances.

Of course, we won’t just be focusing on verbs, we’ll be focusing on emotion and vocabulary, two things often overlooked in early drafts.

Look at the verbs in the passage above. How many of them would you keep given this is a battle scene?

The language is artistic (at least it’s trying to be, as I wrote it), but the verbs do not match the emotions of the scene.

So, let’s dig in.

The emotion of a scene

Simply put, the emotion of a scene (or passage) is something I use to help discern whether the language is best serving the story. In the passage above, we know it’s meant to be a battle sequence in a serious feeling fantasy (as opposed to a more jovial or fun one such as The Lies of Locke Lamora).

The language, therefore, should be relatively serious and should, where the choice is there, convey a sense of threat, danger, action, or tension. We want the readers to be biting their nails or wincing as a spear buries itself in someone’s gut.

With that in mind, lets look at some of the word choices and find some alternatives that will better match our passage.

To me, the standout words are pranced, whizzed, bellowed/darted, trepidatious, and battered.

That’s quite a few.

To see why these word choices aren’t quite right, we could look at their dictionary definitions. For some, this gives us an answer:

Prance (verb, without object): to spring from the hind legs; to move by springing, as a horse. To ride gaily, proudly, or insolently.

Prance is generally used as a jovial word, associated with dancing. A prancing horse can mean one of a few things, though it’s safe to say you’d not want to ride into battle on a prancing horse.

So, let’s substitute the word.

In its place, prancing was meant only to mean the horse moved forward because it was heeled by its rider. So, we could say something like:

He heeled the horse, and it moved forward.

But that’s no fun. We’ve used a more accurate verb but the line now carries none of the emotion we want to convey. There is no threat, danger, action, or tension here.

Looking through the thesaurus can give us some good alternatives if none come to mind (though be careful when doing this, for reasons mentioned in this post).

Some good options are: cantered, jumped, ran, and leapt.

Personally, I’d stick with cantered or ran as they imply the most speed on foot; jumped and leapt bring to mind the image of a horse clearing a jump or chasm or moving in a more abrupt manner than we’d expect from a warhorse.

The second biggest offender here is trepidatious. By its dictionary definition, it isn’t wrong, but it takes the reader out of the scene for a moment when the goal is to get their heart rates going.

Trepidity is associated more with anxiousness or nerves; as such it would be more fittingly used to describe the bowmen before the battle begins or to describe the emotions of the rider if they have a secondary motive (an example could be that they are a distraction to allow somebody else to sneak into a place).

Instead, we could look at words related to fear. Words like fearful, shaky, scared, or frightened.

Using one of these would give us a more fitting sentence, but in my opinion the sentence does not need an adjective here. It reads far better without.

The bowmen scattered a heartbeat before it could smash into their mounts, so it only battered into one.

The major issue in this line for me is the final part ‘so it only battered into one’. It’s too casual and too passive for a high-stakes battle scene. But editing that is a topic for another post (especially as this one has gone on a bit!).

So, to finish, I’ll post a before and after of the passage below. The focus of this post has been on matching word choices with the emotions of a scene, but you may find one or two extra reasons for change in my edit.

Before:

After:

He heeled the horse, and it cantered forward. An arrow flew past Rudolf’s ear, and another stabbed into his horse’s side. The horse bellowed in pain but darted on blindly. The bowmen scattered a heartbeat before Rudolf’s horse charged into their mounts and crashed into one. The horse collapsed, and Rudolf plunged his spear into its fallen rider’s belly.

And for those who would like to see all the changes (bold = added; strikethrough = removed):

He heeled the horse, and it pranced cantered forward. An arrow whizzed flew past Rudolf’s ear, and another stabbed into the his horse’s side [presumably]. The horse bellowed in pain but darted on blindly. The trepidatious bowmen scattered a heartbeat before Rudolf’s horse could smash charged into their mounts, so it only and crashed into one. The horse collapsed, and Rudolf plunged his spear into its fallen rider’s belly.

This passage is still not to the point I’d like it to be (the last line is a bit messy for my taste), but hopefully this has demonstrated the idea behind finding the emotions of a scene and matching your vocabulary to that.

What do you think? How would you have edited this line if it was in your own book? Let me know in the comments.