When I larp I want to feel. A lot of emotions. Intense emotions. No matter if those emotions are infatuation or fear, I love feeling my heart racing in my chest. This post presents techniques on how to create and intensify emotions. It will give you some tips on how to use your breathing and your thoughts to intensify the emotions in a scene . If you are feeling more ambitious, there are also tips observing how emotional states affect your body, and how to use those observations to create and strengthen emotions.

Breath

When we experience strong emotions our breathing is affected. We also perceive emotions based on how everyone else breathes. Generally it is subconscious, we rarely think of our own breathing nor of anyone else’s. Yet when someone breathes in an emotional way, we pick it up immediately. This trick is often used in films, for example in horror movies when you clearly hear the protagonist’s frightened breath in intense scenes.

Most emotions have breath patterns we recognize. Calm deep breathing, a sad sigh, or a lover’s quivering breath. Breath patterns can be deep or shallow, fast or slow, labored or relaxed, smooth or uneven, loud or quiet.

More than one type of breath can convey the same emotion. Let’s take anger for example: You can take tense deep breaths like you are about to explode. You can be holding your breath because you are clenching your jaws tightly. You can snarl, snort or growl.

How we breath directly affect our emotions and stress levels. The same way you can take a deep breath to calm yourself down, you can take quick, shallow breaths to begin feeling stressed. Changing your breath is a quick way of changing and conveying how you feel.

Using the voice is often effective. Whimpering fearfully, raising your voice in anger, or humming happily also creates and communicates emotions.

From Of Good And Evil, train museum photooshoot. Photo by Linn Vikman

Thoughts

Now we move on to the inner game. What you think while you are larping.

By choosing what to think about you can also create strong emotions. Whether you think in words or pictures, you can focus your thoughts on what you want to feel. If you want to be scared, for example, then by repeating in your head: “Shit, we’re gonna die. We are gonna die. They will tear us to pieces.” or by imagining monsters in every shadow, you will feed that emotion. Or if you want to feel grief, think intensely about the loss and missing the character’s loved one, over and over again.

Trying to create emotions through inner play may feel silly and weird at first, but try it. Think the thoughts the character would think. Focus on the thoughts and images that belong to the character. Hold on to those thoughts, give them as much feeling as you can, and it will intensify with time.

Body

Emotions are physical. Emotion is something that occurs and expresses itself in our bodies, which gives you a chance to manipulate your emotions with your body. There are many psychological studies that show how furrowing the brow makes people feel angrier, or how smiling makes people feel happier. When it comes to emotions you can fake it until you make it.

To maximize your emotions at a larp, you can start long before the larp. Pay attention to your body. How do you feel when you are scared or worried? How do you move when you are angry? How and where do you feel joy in your body? You might need to provoke some emotions, for example by watching a horror movie or reading a romance novel. Start paying attention to how and where you experience emotions in your body.

You can then use your observations to reinforce or create emotions at the larp. Take fear for example. Tense up where you are usually tense, and move in the way you move when you are scared. If you tend to have a lump in your stomach, feel how it feels in your stomach. Isn’t there a little lump of fear there?

Small gestures go a long way. Clenching your will make you feel angry, small quick moments can make you feel nervous, half closing your eyes will make you feel sleepy.

From Of Good And Evil, winter photoshoot. Photo by Emmelie Nordström.

Use everything together

Trick your body into believing that it is afraid. (Or happy. Or sad.) Your body isn’t very clever in this respect. If your body is breathing as if it were frightened, you are tense in the same way as when you are terrified, and you are thinking about the monster in the forest, then your body will assume that you are scared and will feel that way. It will create and reinforce that emotion.

Also by acting like you are angry, other players will react to the characters anger and reflect that emotion back to you, creating an even stronger feedback loop of emotion. In the same way paying attention to other players social cues will help you pick up and be influenced by their moods.

When working with both the outer and the inner game, with body, breathing and thoughts, they will reinforce each other. If you smile with a silly smile, sigh with longing and have sweet fantasies about your beloved, then each of those things will feel more natural. All three parts will help you to awaken emotions of falling in love.

If you want to have strong emotions when larping you should dare to strive for it. Dare to use tricks and techniques to achieve the intense emotional experience you want. As a bonus, you will also learn a lot about how you work emotionally.