♦♦♦ [STORY] Your Character’s Secret Life: How to Show, Not Tell, Using Behavioral Residue

Characters lie, but their surroundings don’t. Scuffed shoes, a half-eaten meal, or untouched mail—silent clues can reveal the truth behind the words.

Words Aren’t Enough

Characters lie—to themselves, to other characters, and to the audience. Hell, even narrators lie. But their surroundings never lie.

Psychologist Sam Gosling calls the surroundings, behavioral residue—the unconscious marks people leave behind that reveal their habits, emotions, and identity—pure gold. For visual storytellers, it’s the mother lode. These cues let you deepen your Character’s presence throughout a scene, making them feel real without resorting to verbose, wordy chains of text and captions.

This worksheet will help you apply behavioral residue to your comics and graphic novels, ensuring your characters are revealed visually. We are making comics and graphic novels, after all. If you’re writin’ a novel, friend… you’re on the wrong blog. Intensify your environment, objects, and habits rather than direct narration.

So, how do you apply this to your comics?

The Three Types of Behavioral Residue and How to Use Them

Gosling’s theory breaks down behavioral residue into three key categories:

1. Identity Claims – Objects people use to express who they are (or who they want others to think they are).

2. Feeling Regulators – Items that influence mood or emotions.

3. Unintentional Residue – The accidental but telling traces of everyday life.

Let’s break these down with examples you can apply directly to your comics.