Sharley, I think more showing is probably right on the nail.
I blogged about this kind of thing quite recently, which might help:
http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2011/08/thinking-introspection-and-spilling-tea-on-the-dog.html
And this
Would it help if she was a little more self-aware, i.e. she knows she's being weak and fretful, and tells herself to get a grip, something like that? Maybe she says/thinks something like:
Emma, stop it. You're stronger than this, for God's sake. |
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is good advice too. Partly because it injects some energy, which is often what's hard to find when a character's low and lost or stuck. And also because if you really do have to put in something which
But you would need her to
act on that galvanised feeling, not just to slump back, or readers might get as fed up with her as we do with a friend (or ourselves) who's always fretting about things, but never actually doing anything about it.
<Added>oops!
And also because if you really do have to put in something which the reader's liable to take in the wrong way, one way to deal with it is what I think of as 'if you can't beat them, join them'. i.e. acknowledge what the reader might be thinking/feeling, and then work round it...