It’s standard for writers to describe their characters’ physical bodies – their facial features, body type and shape, coloring, and other features. And we spend a lot of time in their heads, delineating their various emotional states.

But how do your characters feel in their bodies? In other words, what aches or pains do they have? How do their bodies react to their emotional states? How do they experience the physical self?

Ask your character some of the questions below. If you are working on a specific scene right now, make these queries in context of what’s happening in your novel.

Right now my character feels _______________.

His head feels ______________________.

Her shoulders feel ______________________.

He is very aware of his ________________________, because it feels ________________.