On Writing Body Language: How to Show Emotion Without Telling

One of the main feedbacks I got from my editor about my manuscript was the lack of body language in my manuscript. Which I know sounds weird. After all, who forgets to add body language in their story? Me, apparently.

I thought I’d added enough, but turns out saying that someone nodded or gestured isn’t the best description. If anything it’s a nod to the fact that I grew up on Tumblr. Which is bad per say, but it does leave room for a lot of work.

So, when I started revising my manuscript, I had to add more expressions via body language in it. This all links back to the whole “show, don’t tell” mantra we’ve all heard and I think it’s pretty valid in this context. After all, body language affects our perspective of people and situations in real life too. It’s only natural that characters in a book also pick up on body language and behave a certain way.

Instead of writing “Sarah was anxious,” you can let her body tell the story. Maybe she picks at her fingernail until it bleeds. Maybe her knee bounces under the table. Maybe she can’t make eye contact and keeps glancing at the door. This adds more finesse in your story.

And in this post, we’re going to look at how to write body language effectively. You’ll learn why the body doesn’t lie, how to create unique movement patterns for each character, the seven universal facial expressions every writer should know, and how to avoid the clichés that make body language feel generic. So, let’s begin

The Science of Truth (Why the Body Doesn’t Lie)

To understand why body language is so powerful in fiction, you need to understand how our brains are wired. The drive to survive is a function of our limbic system—the part of the brain responsible for emotions, behavior, and the motivations that keep us alive. This system doesn’t think. It doesn’t deliberate. It just reacts based on “files” it’s created through our life experiences.

Understanding How the Limbic System Works

Imagine you show a child a picture of a cookie. The child will smile almost instantly. This happens because the first time that child had a cookie, their limbic brain created a file folder labeled “cookie” and stuffed it with the emotion of “joy.” Inside that joy folder is the physical instruction for a smile. This entire process—cookie, memory, joy, smile—happens faster than we can even measure.

Because the limbic system is designed for survival, it’s not meant to lie. It’s meant to express the truth about what might hurt us or what might keep us going. It’s a warning system that operates below conscious thought.

In 1984, Winston’s body constantly betrays him. He sweats when he shouldn’t. He flinches at the telescreen. His hands shake when he writes in his journal. Orwell doesn’t need to tell us that Winston is terrified—his body does it for him. And because the limbic system doesn’t lie, we trust those physical reactions more than anything Winston says out loud.

This is why, as writers, we can use body language to reveal what characters are really feeling even when they’re trying to hide it.

Why We Trust Body Over Words

If a character takes a sip of a drink, winces, and then hands it to someone else saying, “This tastes great,” while their brow is knit and their lips are pulled tight, the reader knows exactly what to believe.

The words are a lie. The expression is the truth, produced by the part of the brain that hates lying. This is one of the most powerful tools you have as a writer. You can create incredible layers in your scenes by having a character’s body language directly contradict what they’re saying. The dialogue tells one story. The body tells another. And the reader gets to piece together the truth.

In Gone Girl, Amy Dunne is a master manipulator precisely because she controls her body language. She performs grief, performs fear, performs love all while her internal monologue reveals the calculation behind every gesture. Gillian Flynn shows us how body language can be weaponized when someone is self-aware enough to fake it. And when Amy finally drops the mask, the shift in her physicality is terrifying.

Creating a “Body Language Voice”

One of the most common mistakes in writing body language is giving every character the same emotional indicators. Trust me, this is important because if every character rolls their eyes when annoyed, or every angry person clenches their fists, or every nervous character bites their lip, your writing starts to feel generic. This is a mistake I made in my initial draft.

And it can be a huge issue if you have a diverse cast of characters. They’re going to start blurring together. And readers will stop paying attention to the physical cues you’re giving them because they’ve seen it all before.

To take your work to the next level, you need to develop a unique “body language voice” for each character in your story.

The Problem with Generic Gestures

Think about the last time you read a scene where a character “crossed their arms defensively” or “tapped their foot impatiently.” Did it tell you anything specific about that character? Or could it have been anyone?

Generic body language is like white noise. It fills space, but it doesn’t add meaning. Every character rolling their eyes when annoyed makes your cast feel interchangeable. Every woman putting her hands on her hips to show frustration is a missed opportunity to reveal something deeper about who she is. When body language becomes a reflex for the writer instead of a choice for the character, the writing flattens.

Individualize Your Characters’ Movements

Just like people have unique ways of speaking—different vocabularies, speech patterns, verbal tics—they have unique ways of moving. Some people shake their legs when they’re nervous. Others put their tongue in their cheek to keep from laughing. Some can rarely maintain eye contact.

In Pride and Prejudice, Darcy’s body language is all about control. He stands stiffly. He doesn’t gesture much. His movements are economical, formal, restrained. Elizabeth, on the other hand, is expressive. She can’t hide her reactions. Her eyes flash. She turns away sharply when she’s angry. The contrast between their physicality tells you everything about class, personality, and the tension between them without Austen ever saying “Darcy was reserved” or “Elizabeth was spirited.”

Similarly in The Book Thief, Liesel’s relationship with books is physical. She steals them. She clutches them. She runs her fingers over the words. Markus Zusak doesn’t just tell us books matter to her—he shows it through how her body interacts with them. That’s a character-specific movement pattern that reveals who she is.

Develop Character Biographies with Movement

When you’re building your character, don’t just think about their backstory, goals, and personality. Think about how they move. Ask yourself: How does this character express anger?

For one person, it might be a clenched fist. For another, it might be a sudden, eerie stillness. For a third, it might be pacing—unable to stand still, burning off the adrenaline through movement.

How does this character show affection? A hand on the shoulder? Sitting close without touching? Avoiding physical contact entirely but doing small acts of service?

How does this character react to fear? Do they freeze? Run? Get louder? Go quiet?

Some characters are self-aware. They know what their body is doing and they’re careful about what they reveal. Others are open books; every emotion plays across their face before they can stop it.

In The Hunger Games, Katniss is hyper-aware of her body language because survival depends on it. She forces herself to smile for the cameras. She controls her reactions during interviews. But when she’s alone or caught off-guard, her body betrays her: she flinches, she tenses, she scans for threats. That tension between performed calm and instinctive fear is part of what makes her compelling.

By individualizing these responses, you make your characters feel like real, well-rounded people. You give readers something to latch onto that’s uniquely theirs.

The Vocabulary of the Body

Not all body language is created equal. Some gestures are quick and efficient. Others carry emotional weight. And some happen whether the character wants them to or not.

To make your scenes more intentional and meaningful, it helps to break body language down into three categories: universal, purposeful, and instinctual.

Universal Body Language

These are the common gestures that everyone recognizes such as nods, shrugs, waves and more. 

In fiction, universal body language acts as a “base vocabulary”—similar to dialogue tags like “said” or “asked.” It’s functional. It keeps the story moving without drawing attention to itself.

Universal gestures are great for efficiency but they should not be overused. I made that mistake. Save yourself from the frustration you’ll experience later on and use them sparsely but effectively. Instead of writing a character saying “yes,” you can show them nodding. Just don’t overdo it. 

Because here’s the thing: these gestures are so common that they don’t reveal much about who your character is. A nod is a nod. It tells the reader what the character is communicating, but it doesn’t tell them anything deeper. But if all your body language is universal, your characters will feel flat.

Purposeful Body Language

This is non-verbal communication that a character chooses to use in place of dialogue.

Purposeful body language is perfect for “the unsaid”—those moments where words feel too dangerous, too vulnerable, or too revealing. It’s the language of tension, hesitation, and testing the waters.

In Pride and Prejudice, when Darcy helps Elizabeth into the carriage without speaking, that gesture says more than dialogue ever could. It’s deliberate. It’s him trying to communicate something he can’t say out loud yet.

If two people are unsure of their feelings for each other, one might reach out and barely make contact with the other’s hand. That gesture says a thousand words without the risk of outright rejection. Purposeful body language is your secret weapon for subtext. Use it when your characters can’t—or won’t—say what they’re really thinking.

If you want to learn more about writing subtext, check out my blog post: On Writing Subtext: What It Is & Why It Matters in Storytelling. 

Instinctual Body Language

These are the unintentional, intrinsic movements that reveal a character’s true thoughts and feelings. They’re everything and anything from picking at a fingernail, chewing a lip, to tapping a foot. These aren’t choices—they’re reflexes. 

Instinctual body language also includes autonomous responses: a sheen of sweat on the brow when someone’s lying. A flushed face when they’re embarrassed or angry. 

Instinctual body language is visceral. It’s the stuff readers feel because it’s rooted in the body’s survival mechanisms. It’s what makes a particularly tense scene come alive. When you show a character’s hands shaking or their breath coming too fast, readers recognize that response in themselves. And that creates empathy.

The Seven Universal Facial Expressions

Regardless of culture, language, or location, humans share seven universal facial expressions. These are hardwired into us, produced by the limbic system, and recognized across the entire species.

Understanding the specific mechanics of these expressions can help you describe them with more precision. Avoid vague, generic descriptions like “she looked sad.” Let’s look at them a closely to see how each works.

Happiness

This pulls up the cheeks and the corners of the mouth into a smile. But here’s the key: the edges of the eyes must squint for the smile to look genuine. If someone is smiling with their mouth but their eyes stay wide and flat, it’s fake. Readers recognize this instinctively, even if they don’t consciously know why.

In Gone Girl, Amy performs happiness constantly. She knows how to smile the right way, how to make her eyes crinkle at the edges, how to sell the performance. Gillian Flynn describes the mechanics of Amy’s fake smiles just enough that readers feel the calculation behind them—and that’s what makes her terrifying.

Sadness

Look for drooping eyelids, downcast eyes, and the corners of the lips lowering. The eyebrows will also slant down from the middle, creating a subtle arch. Sadness pulls everything down. The face literally falls.

In The Book Thief, Liesel’s sadness after losing her brother isn’t described as “she felt sad.” Zusak shows her staring at nothing, her face slacking, her movements slow and heavy. The weight of grief is in her body, not in exposition.

Surprise

This is an emotional response to the unexpected. Raised brows, wide eyes, and a dropped chin. Surprise is quick—it flashes across the face and then transitions into another emotion (fear, joy, anger, confusion). It’s different from a startle response, which is a full-body physical reflex.

A character’s eyebrows shoot up when they see something they didn’t expect. Their mouth opens slightly. Their eyes go wide. It’s instinctive, fast, and hard to fake.

Fear

This is honestly an expression I’ve struggled with. Here’s what usually happens. 

The eyebrows are raised and pulled together. The upper eyelids rise, the lower lids tense, and the lips are pulled back horizontally while the jaw drops.

Fear makes the face open—eyes wide, mouth slightly parted, as if the body is preparing to scream or run.

In The Hunger Games, Katniss tries to hide her fear during the reaping, but her body gives her away. Her breath comes too fast. Her eyes are too wide. She’s gripping Prim’s hand so hard her knuckles are white. Collins doesn’t tell us Katniss is terrified, she shows us the physical markers of fear that Katniss can’t fully control.

Disgust

Disgust is visceral. It’s the face you make when you smell something rotten or taste something foul. The eyebrows lower, the nose wrinkles, and the top lip raises into a “U” shape while the lower lip juts out. And it translates directly to emotional disgust, too—when a character is repulsed by an idea, a person, or a situation.

Anger

Anger tightens the face. Everything pulls inward, compact, ready to strike. The eyebrows are pulled down and together. The eyes stare hard—unblinking, focused. The lips are pursed tightly together, or the jaw is clenched.

A character’s nostrils might flare (but please don’t overdo this. I’ve read way too many romance novels recently where the baddie’s nostrils flared a bit too much). Their breathing might get shallow and sharp. Their hands might curl into fists. Anger doesn’t just live in the face, it radiates through the entire body.

Contempt

This is unique because it’s the only universal expression that’s asymmetrical. One side of the face will squinch up—lip curled, eyebrow slightly raised—while the other side remains relaxed. It’s the ultimate “I’m better than you” expression. 

In Gone Girl, Amy’s contempt for Nick shows up in these small, asymmetrical expressions. One corner of her mouth lifts in a smirk. One eyebrow arches while the other stays flat. It’s subtle, but it tells the reader everything about how she really feels.

A Note on Writing Trauma

Trauma doesn’t show up as one of the seven universal expressions. It shows up in the absence of expression. In the disconnect between what a character’s face is doing and what their body is screaming.

A character with PTSD might freeze mid-sentence, their face going blank while their hands start shaking. They might smile and nod through a conversation while their breathing gets shallow and their vision tunnels. They might seem calm on the surface while their heart is pounding so hard they can feel it in their throat.

Trauma lives in the body. It shows up as hypervigilance—eyes that never stop scanning, shoulders that never fully relax, a constant readiness to run or fight. It shows up as dissociation—a character who’s physically present but mentally gone, staring through people instead of at them.

If you’re writing a character dealing with trauma, the body language gets more complex. I’ve got a blog post that talks about trauma specifically. Check it out here: On Writing Trauma: How to Do Justice to Your Story & Readers.

Show Clusters, Not Single Expressions

While doing my research for body language, I found that one expression on its own might be misleading. But when you combine expressions into a cluster, you create a fuller, more honest picture.

If a character smiles (happiness) but their eyes are tight and their jaw is clenched (anger), the reader knows something’s wrong. The smile is fake. The anger is real.

Clusters give you nuance. They let you show complex, contradictory emotions that feel real. Because that’s how people actually experience emotion—not one feeling at a time, but multiple feelings layered on top of each other, sometimes fighting for dominance.

When you show a character’s body language in clusters, you’re not just describing what they look like. You’re showing the reader what’s happening inside their head. This is particularly important if you’re writing a limited POV where you can’t have the character voice their internal thoughts. Actually, if you add this to a first-person POV and show the character’s body language instead of having them say, “I hate this person,” it’ll make your character more real and compelling.

Moving Beyond the Cheat Sheet

Body language cheat sheets are everywhere. You’ve probably seen them: 

• Crossed arms = defensive. 
• Fidgeting = nervous.
• Avoiding eye contact = lying.

And sure, they’re useful as a starting point. But if you rely on them too heavily, your writing ends up feeling like stock footage. Way too generic and interchangeable. And this is where your creativity as a writer comes through. The best body language isn’t pulled from a list. It’s rooted in context, filtered through perception, and specific to the individual character.

Why Cheat Sheets Fall Short

Cheat sheets give you the universal baseline, but they don’t give you the character. If every angry character in your manuscript clenches their fists, what are you actually showing the reader? That they’re angry. Great. But you could’ve just said that. The body language isn’t adding depth—it’s just replacing the word “angry” with a visual.

The problem with relying on cheat sheets is that they lead to melodrama. The kind of overwritten, overly physical descriptions that feel like bad acting. A character’s “heart pounds.” Their “palms sweat.” And none of it tells the reader who this person actually is.

Four Better Methods for Writing Body Language

While working on my manuscript (and screaming over how to make my characters unique), I came up with a method for writing body language better. Here’s what I do.

Focus on Context

If you build rich enough context, the reader will feel what the character feels without you needing to describe every heartbeat or damp palm.

If a man hears his partner has committed a murder, we already know he’s upset. You don’t need to tell us his heart is pounding or his hands are shaking. The context does the work. 

What you do need to show is what he does next—does he sit down heavily? Does he stand frozen in the doorway? Does he start pacing? That’s where the character lives.

Use Meaningful Interactions

Instead of a generic eye roll or a sigh, show how your character interacts with their environment.

An angry character doesn’t just clench their fists. Maybe they slam a drawer. Maybe they stomp around the room while they’re talking, their movements sharp and aggressive. Maybe they grip the edge of the table so hard their knuckles go white.

A sad or reflective character doesn’t just stare into space. Maybe they sit at the kitchen table twisting their coffee cup instead of drinking from it. Maybe they run their fingers over an old photograph. Maybe they fold and refold a piece of paper until the creases start to tear.

Embrace Idiosyncrasies

Give your characters tics that are specific to them. Maybe an eleven-year-old boy who’s self-conscious about his body pinches his own belly as he walks across a pool deck. Maybe a woman who grew up poor still checks price tags twice, even when she can afford it now. Maybe a character who was in a car accident can’t ride in the front seat without gripping the door handle.

These aren’t universal gestures. They’re personal. And that’s what makes them stick.

Capitalize on Perception

Physical media like books give you something visual media can’t: access into a character’s mind, regardless of what POV you’re using. You can show emotion through how they perceive the world, not just how they physically react to it.

A character feeling shame might see the people laughing around them as having “big white teeth” that look like they’re going to “pop out of their mouths.” That filtered, distorted view tells the reader more about their emotional state than a list of gestures ever could.

In The Hunger Games, when Katniss is dissociating or overwhelmed, Collins shows it through warped perception. Sounds get distant. Time stretches or compresses. The body language is there, but it’s filtered through Katniss’s subjective experience—and that makes it more powerful.

Practical Exercises to Level Up Your Writing

If you want to get better at writing body language, here are three exercises that’ll force you to think differently:

• The Movement Audit: Choose a simple task you do every day—sitting in a chair, making coffee, working at your laptop. Write out every single physical step and movement involved. Are you leaning forward? Crossing your legs? Arching your back? You’ll be shocked at how many micro-movements happen in mundane tasks. Weaving these into your manuscript makes characters feel alive.
• The Silent Dialogue Challenge: Write a scene where two characters need to communicate, but they’re not allowed to speak out loud. They have to convey emotions and information purely through body language. This forces you to find creative ways to show internal states without relying on dialogue or exposition.
• People Watching: Go somewhere crowded and watch how people interact without listening to their words. Can you tell who’s angry, who’s lying, who’s in love just by watching their bodies? Fun fact: my sisters love people watching and I’ve actually learned how to write characters’ body language based on this. 

When you master body language, you stop just describing what characters look like and start showing who they are. This lets readers co-create the story in their own minds, filling in the emotional gaps with their own understanding of what a trembling hand or a too-tight smile really means. And this is the difference between a book with a niche cult following and a mildly memorable book. And trust me, I’d rather have a thousand dedicated book fans than just be known as a writer by people who’ve never read my book.