Writing Excuses 9.19: Showing Emotion

How do you go about writing a character showing their emotions without them sounding whiny (or whatever the "too-much" version of the appropriate emotion might be)? Adding to the difficulty of the exercise, how do you know where that "too much" line is for your book, your genre, and your audience? We talk about how we've each faced this challenge, and how that's been very different for each of us. Sometimes it comes down to "show, don't tell," and sometimes that rule flat out doesn't work. And sometimes it doesn't come down to a simple rule at all. (Okay, most of the time that's what it comes down to.)