Recently, I stole a few books on psychology from my mother and have been whispering to them at night in hopes of learning the secret to the universe. No such luck - but! What I did divine from this particular beauty could be of help to writers who are having trouble with body language gestures or a signature something their main character frequently has a habit of doing.
I've only breached the first chapter but, I've already learned quite a bit. Elizabeth Kuhnke talks a lot about things people may do subconsciously; such as micro expressions. Those of you who have seen the show Lie To Me know what I'm talking about. To those of you who don't: Micro expressions are bits of emotion that flash across our face for a split second. Now, you may be able to hide your feelings by way of specific gestures and serious mental discipline but, no one is capable of hiding micro expressions. You can use that to your advantage as a writer.
For instance: You could have a heroine that is very observant and is a natural Emotion Detector and then have the princely cool guy whose suave and is one of those 007 types who never lets his real feelings show.
Then she goes on to talk about gestures that are signature to us as a person. How we all have something that defines us. Some are stronger than others. She makes an example of the tennis player who used to yank on the back of shorts just before a match. It was something he did a lot of and people began to mock him in the locker room.
It'll help with identifying what gesture goes with what emotion and how we react to certain things. It has whole chapters for our hands, legs, arms, and lips.
I hope this will help ^_^
1 comment:
This sounds like such a great tool for writers. Thanks so much for recommending it, Belle. I'm going to go request it from my library now =)
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