Setting and body language are crucial in immersing your reader and creating emotional impact. Setting is character, and it lends deep insight into who your perspective character is and how they feel and see the world. Body language adds depth to your dialogue, revealing what stirs beneath your characters’ dialogue (how they’re saying what they’re saying, how they relate).
Remember to engage the reader’s five senses—not just what they see but what they taste, touch, and smell too. This will help you draw the reader in and reveal the full spectrum of their experiences. Setting shouldn’t just occur at the beginning or the end; make sure to weave it throughout.
Replace cliches and generalities with specific imagery, and note that readers often welcome the unexpected and strange. Your imagery should also be clear; if the reader has to reread to understand, you’re likely to lose them.
It’s important to keep it relevant too. Focusing on every element of what your character eats throughout your novel, for example, can bog down the prose with excessive detail. Imagery should always do something, such as create an atmosphere or reveal something about the perspective character’s state of mind.
Body language and setting help you avoid telling the reader what’s occurring by focusing on what you can show. It makes your characters feel like real people that they can visualize and connect with.
You’ll want to avoid repeating the same mannerisms ad nauseam, but you can still add dialogue quirks to distinguish a character’s dialogue and their unique way of speaking and emoting.
If you’re looking for additional ways to incorporate body language throughout, check out The Emotion Thesaurus. This is one of my favorite resources for writers, as you can search for a word like “anger” and find numerous ways to show that emotion in dialogue or otherwise.
Let us know if you have any questions about crafting compelling visual imagery, or inquire about our services to receive feedback on yours.
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