Bigger Emotions Are Not Making Your Scenes More Complex

Writers, I have one request…

…stop confusing emotion with complexity.

A character crying is not complexity, a character screaming isn’t complexity. A character confessing their deepest fears isn’t complexity.

Those are emotions, they are real, valid, and sometimes they are powerful on the page. But they’re not the same thing as complexity. Conflating the two is why emotional scenes can land flatter than the writer intended. Because complexity happens when a character wants something, and still can’t make themselves take it or let themselves accept it.

Let’s say a woman has been falling for someone for months. Maybe years. She thinks about him constantly. She replays conversations and looks for excuses to spend time with him.

Essentially, she’s completely in love with him.

First, let’s look at emotional volume.

One night he finally sits down with her and says: “I have feelings for you.”

And she immediately breaks, she tells him everything. How long she’s loved him and how badly she’s wanted this. But also how scared she’s been to say it.

They kiss.

The scene ends.

There’s a lot of emotion there. But there isn’t much complexity, because the moment she feels it, she expresses it. The moment he opens the invitation for her to meet his feelings, she jumps at it. There’s no gap between what she feels and what she does.

Now let’s look at emotional complexity.

Same woman. Same feelings. Same confession.

But this woman believes something. She believes that if people get close enough to know the real her, they’ll leave. Maybe she’s believed it for years. Maybe she’s believed it her entire life.

But, now they’re sitting on her couch watching a movie. And he finally turns, out of the blue, and says: “I have feelings for you.”

She just stares at him. Doesn’t say anything. For a second she looks like she forgot how to speak. Then she looks back at the television.

“I’m serious,” he says.

Still, she says nothing. She gets up and walks over to the TV. Turns the movie off, then heads into the kitchen. The movie wasn’t even close to finished. She starts cleaning up the food they ate earlier.

He follows her. Starts telling her how long he’s felt this way. How much she means to him. How he didn’t want to keep pretending anymore and it just had to come out.

She acts like she doesn’t hear him. She rinses plates and throws away napkins and wipes down the counter. Keeps moving. Keeps cleaning. She keeps refusing to stop long enough to let the conversation happen at all.

He finishes talking and he’s just standing there watching her move all over the place. Then she starts gathering his things. His jacket, his keys, his wallet. Hands them to him.

And the only thing she can manage to say is: “I’m sorry.”

To be clear, she’s not doing these things because she doesn’t feel the same way. Because she does. That’s the problem. There is a belief that is operating underneath her that demands her loyalty to it: If people get close, they will leave you…

She walks him to the door. Opens it. Waits for him to leave. Then closes it behind him and stands there, still holding the doorknob.

Now we have complexity!!!!

She feels exactly the same amount as the woman in the first version. The difference is that now there’s a fight happening inside her. She wants him. She wants exactly what he’s offering.

That’s what readers lean into. Not the feeling. The struggle. The reason she can’t act on it.

If your emotional scenes aren’t landing the way you want them to, stop giving your characters bigger feelings or bigger confessions or bigger crying fits. Give them something they desperately want. Then give them a reason they can’t make themselves take it.

Emotional volume isn’t complexity, the gap is, the space between what they want and what they can actually allow themselves to have.

That’s where the good stuff lives.