Writing Emotion

Is less more, and how do you make it real?

Back when I posted about how showing and telling should co-operate, not compete, a commenter said this:

I struggle with showing my main character’s emotion, over-complicating things in my attempt to avoid signals and abstract nouns. I’d love to pull off a reserved first person narrator, one you feel for, while she’s trying to hide her pain even from herself, but so far not succeeded.

I know what she means. We English by tradition express everything from agony to ecstasy with a mild not too bad, thanks, but it’s not only us who struggle to get the balance.

In theory, we all know that Showing emotions may work better than Telling them, but are three pages of churning stomachs, trembling hands and flushed faces really the best way? So quickly, every sentence seems stuffed with dramatic metaphors and elaborate adjectives, and the dreaded verdict ‘overwritten’ looms. Why is it so hard to write just enough to make the character’s emotional state come alive on the page, when in writing the law of diminishing returns sets in so quickly?

In theory, we also know that Less is More (except when it isn’t) but how can you be sure the reader doesn’t just understand, but really feels what's going on with the character ... even when your internal narrator would hardly put it into words themself?