What is the best way to describe this?

I'd use, "he furled his brow."

Of course it's easier to show emotion in a graphic novel, but I'd argue that in the webtoon you shared, she doesn't really need the "aggravation mark" to show the emotion, because it's clear from the drawing.

I have a character who scrunches his brow a lot, because his is a kid and I think scrunch sounds cuter than furled.

You can also try:
grimaced
glowered
scowled
glared
shot a dirty look
gave him an icy stare
shot daggers at him
sulked

If you want more just plug any of the above into a thesaurus.

And I think someone, sooner rather than later, is going to punctuate a book with emoticons, and it will be a best seller.

SnugglePuggle said:

All right ya'll, I can't for the life of me think of how to describe this for a book. If any of you like to read mangas/manhuas/etc, you would know this very popular expression of emotion they use.

They write this little symbol, looks like it has about four corners on it, to show that the person is very irritated or annoyed.

I want to describe that in detail in my book without just the "he said, annoyed" part. My best attempt at it is "He clenched his jaw."


Does anyone else know of a better way? I like to be descriptive in my work, LOL. Or, did I hit it on the head already and there's nothing else to describe it better?


If anyone wants to see what I'm talking about, read this webtoon: https://www.webtoons.com/en/romance/my-dear-cold-blooded-king/ep-1/viewer?title_no=961&episode_no=2

and scroll down to one of the the panels where the MC says, "Ugh. I can't believe the nerve of those soldiers." It's that little red symbol on her head.

That's also one of my favorite webtoons, by the way. Very enjoyable read and the art gets better as it moves along. Highly recommended!

Click to expand...

So, I scrolled down, and you'll also notice there are a lot of other indicators of her annoyance.

The dialogue itself indicates her annoyance. If you had *only* that line of dialogue ("Ugh, I can't believe the nerve of those soldiers") to go by, no pictures or words or any other context, what emotion would you think the character is feeling? You actually don't need anything else here.

However, there are several more things. There's an action she does right before she said this, where she slams down a knife on...whatever she's cutting (a tomato? Apple? Clown nose?). You know that she's particularly aggressive about this because the person near her comments on it ("Whoa, calm down with the knife, lady.")

You could also add something like this:

She sliced through the apple with much more force than the apple deserved. "Ugh, I can't believe the nerve of those soldiers."

Or something like:

"Ugh, I can't believe the nerve of those soldiers." She slammed the knife down through the apple hard enough to startle a passerby.

"Whoa, careful with the knife, lady..."

Or whatever you like. You can just the dialogue, or a frustrated action plus dialogue, or a frustrated action plus dialogue plus the reaction of someone else. Or you can add a facial expression, which she also has going on, but it can become easy to overuse those or fall back on cliches And, truthfully, it's not necessary in this instance - as noted, there's a lot of other clues that can be put to work, and it's usually better to err on the side of less explanation (er, I think? I mean, that's just general advice, not applicable to every situation, it's worth noting ). But "clenched his jaw" is definitely an option if you need it - the question is, do you really need it, or want it there? I mean, some of writing is about necessity, some is about style, so...does it fall into either of those categories? For me, it's definitely not needed if I were writing a book-version of this scene, and stylistically...the knife thing is much more interesting and specific to the story than jaw-clenching (which can just sort of be a generic emotional signpost).

So um, anyway, there's lots of ways to do it, is my point You can choose how you go about it based on what you want for your book.

I am an avid manga reader and I have also contemplated that symbol - I believe that it is meant to be indicative of a throbbing forehead vein.

Yeah, pretty much what buz said! I'd just add, for emphasis and clarity: you really want to vary it, not just have someone's jaw clench every time. That's OK once or twice, you can use other facial expressions like frown, furrowed brow, etc... but as often as you can, look for a gesture or a line of dialogue that can show the feeling. That way you're not saying the same thing every time--something you definitely want to avoid.

And yes, really do look again at that sequence in the manga again, imagine the symbol wasn't there, and count up all the different ways a reader could still see she's annoyed--there really are so many of them!