One of my favourite parts of developmental editing is the moment you go beneath the surface of a story and start looking at what’s really driving those fictional people. Not just what they do, but who they are, and how that shapes the way they move through the world.
When I work through a manuscript, I’m always looking for the places where characters feel fully inhabited, and the places where they don’t quite. One of the most common culprits? Reaction.
Specifically, the absence of it on the page.
Telling us versus taking us there
When something significant happens in a story, readers need to feel it. Not just know about it. And yet one of the patterns I see most often is writers reaching for exposition to convey a character’s reaction, summarising the emotional moment rather than dramatising it.
There’s nothing wrong with telling, used well and in the right places. But reaction is one of those areas where it tends to fall flat. Here’s why.
Imagine your character has just been told their closest friend has been in an accident. Which of these takes you into the moment?
Example 1:
He was distressed and couldn’t believe his friend was in a hospital. It couldn’t be true. They talked just this morning. How could she be hit by a tram and lie in a hospital?
Example 2:
His mind erased the last words.
‘Excuse me, could you please repeat?’ he asked.
It sounded like his friend was in a hospital, but that couldn’t be true. He’d talked to her this morning.
A dizzying thought crossed his mind and he mustered all his energy so he could hear what the man was telling him. His heart raced over the key words. A tram. Ambulance. Hospital. She was supposed to be at work. How could any of this be real?
The thunder in his chest got louder and he braced himself, trying to catch every word.
Both examples carry the same information. But the first one reports it. The second one puts us inside it.
The difference is a bit like hearing a news bulletin about something that happened versus watching it unfold in front of you. One gives you the information while the other gives you the experience.
Why character reactions matter
Storytelling is an emotional affair. A character’s reaction to what happens, what they’re told, what they discover, is the signal to the reader about what it means. It’s what transforms a plot event into something felt rather than simply noted.
When reactions are missing or summarised away, readers receive the information but don’t experience it alongside the character. They’re watching through a window instead of standing in the room. You don’t need to show every reaction to everything, of course. But the meaningful moments, the ones where something shifts for your character or where you want the reader to sit up and pay attention, those deserve to be on the page.
Bringing character reactions to life
There are three main routes in, and the most powerful scenes often use more than one:
- Body language and physical response. The involuntary stuff. The shallow breath, the hands that won’t stay still, the sudden inability to swallow. The body often knows before the mind does.
- Interiority. What goes through the character’s mind. Not a neat summary of their feelings, but the actual thoughts and questions.
- Dialogue. What they say (or conspicuously don’t say) in response. A deflection, a question asked too carefully, a silence that stretches just a beat too long.
If you’re not sure where to start, The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi is a genuinely useful resource for working out how a specific emotion might manifest in different ways.
And if you’d like a professional eye on how reactions are landing across your manuscript, the Story Check-in might be exactly what you need, a focused, in-depth swipe of your story’s emotional stakes and promise.
