: Re: How do I bring my readers closer to my characters when using the third person? I've chosen to write my story in the third person due to the scope of it, but by doing so I have made it

@Cugini967

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In my experience, not feeling close to characters often comes from inadequately describing what characters are feeling. Don't label the emotions characters feel, rather describe what they do or physically feel that are consequence of the emotion.

For example,

Bob was frustrated.

Does not convey emotion as well as a simple

Bob sighed.

Look out though, because it's easy to get lazy and use something like sighing too much. To help, a great reference is The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide To Character Expression by Ackerman and Puglisi. The book is organized by emotion, one per chapter. For each emotion, it lists things someone feeling that emotion might do (sigh, hold their head) and might feel (pounding in their head, difficulty swallowing). It also lists physical symptoms of particularly acute or chronic feeling of that emotion, and which emotions an emotion might escalate into.

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