In a new post, Mary Carroll Moore offers advice for using character landscapes to convey emotion on the page. Moore defines those landscapes as the character’s inner and outer beliefs, and their history. “I see it as a large ‘container’ that reflects back ourselves as we interact with it,” she says. “You could say it includes our culture, beliefs, spirituality, even our history. Like any reflecting surface, it shows our inner and outer workings.”
For example, your physical surroundings reflect your inner tastes. You choose colors, shapes, decor, objects, and art that have meaning for you. You may be a tidy person or your space may looked lived in. You may have music playing or something cooking in the oven. “What can you find out about your characters on the page, those real or imagined people you seek to make more vivid for readers?” Moore asks. “How can you place these characters in landscapes or containers that tell your readers more about this person, and whether they should invest in that person’s story?”
She suggests starting with setting, the outer container, and using the five senses. “It always helps to place readers in certain time of day or night, in a room or garden or other specific location, to let them know how the light falls on an object or a wall or someone’s arm, what smells and sounds surround the character,” Moore writes. “These sensory details are the main transporters of emotion for a reader.” So before you dig into the emotion of a scene, consider the exterior, the landscape that reflects the interior.
