GoingNorth
Crazy Cat Lady
As a lot of folks know, I'm a writer. My poor characters, being at the mercy of the story line (e.g. me...aka...the ruler of their world), have found themselves in an intensely emotional situation.
Now, when writing you have just words on paper so have to describe facial expressions and what not in order to give dialogue and situations meaning. So, I found myself going, "uh...what does someone look like when really frightened, or really angry, or really tense?"
I started roaming the web and the library looking for photographs of people with captions and articles. I'd take a little notebook, look at the photos, write down what I thought the people were feeling along with a physical description of their expressions (in detail), and then read the accompanying text to see if I'd got it right.
A lot of the time I DIDN'T which was rather unnerving...but a couple of weeks of this has led to me getting it right more often than not, AND it has led to me studying people around me and trying to interpret their expressions. I do read body language well, just not faces. It's kind of fun.
But, while I don't expect kids to do the kind of research I'm doing, I do wonder if there isn't some sort of equivalent where one couldn't work with the kids: show them a relaxed face. Show them an 'emotional' face--have them note the differences and try to figure out what the person is feeling, and then verify it?
It's teaching me to look for really little things I never noticed before: wrinkling around the eyes, tension or relaxation around the lips, pupil dilation, all sorts of things. I even managed to avert a confrontation today in the grocery store (over places in line of all things) by picking up on the woman's facial expression. I wasn't quite sure if she was angry or afraid--actually I think it was a mix of both, but I was able to see that my pushing the issue would lead to her reacting in a negative manner, and figure out how to back off gracefully.
It's also helping a lot with proper eye contact as I was trained to make eye contact, but I tend instead to STARE fixedly at people's eyeballs when I'm talking to them, which makes them nervous. Now I'm learning how to read the start of that and sort of flick my eyes away and back. People are a bit more comfy with me now.
I dunno...it seems to me something useful. Maybe someone could come up with a book or something of facial expressions and...games?...for kids to learn this?
I was VERY surprised at how bad I was/am at this--especially when it comes to reading mixed emotions because I thought I was pretty good at it. I'm seeing so much more in people now than I did before.
toK (next step...standing in front of mirror and trying to figure out how to make MY face show my moods...beyond the twitching muscle in jaw that means I'm ready to throttle something)
Now, when writing you have just words on paper so have to describe facial expressions and what not in order to give dialogue and situations meaning. So, I found myself going, "uh...what does someone look like when really frightened, or really angry, or really tense?"
I started roaming the web and the library looking for photographs of people with captions and articles. I'd take a little notebook, look at the photos, write down what I thought the people were feeling along with a physical description of their expressions (in detail), and then read the accompanying text to see if I'd got it right.
A lot of the time I DIDN'T which was rather unnerving...but a couple of weeks of this has led to me getting it right more often than not, AND it has led to me studying people around me and trying to interpret their expressions. I do read body language well, just not faces. It's kind of fun.
But, while I don't expect kids to do the kind of research I'm doing, I do wonder if there isn't some sort of equivalent where one couldn't work with the kids: show them a relaxed face. Show them an 'emotional' face--have them note the differences and try to figure out what the person is feeling, and then verify it?
It's teaching me to look for really little things I never noticed before: wrinkling around the eyes, tension or relaxation around the lips, pupil dilation, all sorts of things. I even managed to avert a confrontation today in the grocery store (over places in line of all things) by picking up on the woman's facial expression. I wasn't quite sure if she was angry or afraid--actually I think it was a mix of both, but I was able to see that my pushing the issue would lead to her reacting in a negative manner, and figure out how to back off gracefully.
It's also helping a lot with proper eye contact as I was trained to make eye contact, but I tend instead to STARE fixedly at people's eyeballs when I'm talking to them, which makes them nervous. Now I'm learning how to read the start of that and sort of flick my eyes away and back. People are a bit more comfy with me now.
I dunno...it seems to me something useful. Maybe someone could come up with a book or something of facial expressions and...games?...for kids to learn this?
I was VERY surprised at how bad I was/am at this--especially when it comes to reading mixed emotions because I thought I was pretty good at it. I'm seeing so much more in people now than I did before.
toK (next step...standing in front of mirror and trying to figure out how to make MY face show my moods...beyond the twitching muscle in jaw that means I'm ready to throttle something)
