Description

Compare how these writers describe fear:

His nerves seemed to coil and uncoil, then concentrate in the tips of his fingers, around his mouth, along the bridge of his nose. He began to hear the blood thump in his ears. Later he realized he was shaking badly, and he tried to stop himself. But the shaking got worse.

—Bruce Walton in Cave of Danger

My old heart started turning somersaults; and something that felt like a thousand-legged centipede jiggled its way up my spine. I yelled at Rowdy, and tore out down a game trail like a scalded cat. Old Rowdy could usually outrun me, but it was all he could do to stay up with me

—Wilson Rawls in Summer of the Monkeys

Things began happening to me. I got as cold all over as I did the time some mean boys threw me in a spring. My skin started crawling around on me. I stopped breathing and my old heart went absolutely crazy.

—Wilson Rawls in Summer of the Monkeys

I beheld a tall, gray shape, of something or other, moving at the lower end of the valley, where the shade was. It gave me such a stroke of fear, after many others, that my thumb which lay in my mother's Bible (brought in my big pocket, for the sake of safety) shook so much that it came out, and I could not get it in again.

—R. D. Blackmore in Lorna Doone

Many and many a time I tried, and more than once began the thing; but there came a dryness in my throat, and a knocking under the roof of my mount, and a longing to put it off again, as perhaps might be the wisest.

—R. D. Blackmore in Lorna Doone

His legs suddenly felt terribly weak, a cold shiver ran down his back, and his heart seemed to stop beating for a moment; then it all of a sudden began pounding as though it had got loose.

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky in Crime and Punishment

Sonia opened the book and found the place. Her hands trembled; her voice failed her. Twice she tried to read without being able to utter the first syllable.

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky in Crime and Punishment

Terror gripped his heart with an icy hand; it left him numb and exhausted.

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky in Crime and Punishment

She stepped into a pit of darkness that was terrifying. The wind screamed and buffeted her against the tower, and needles of ice pricked her cheek. The ocean lapped viciously below the tower, as though it were a monster eager to swallow the house and towers.

—Dorothy Holder Jones and Ruth Sexton Sargent in The Great Storm

His whole body was tense with fear. He knew he was being watched. He longed to look behind, he longed to run. But he could only move very, very slowly. He inched his way painfully through the thick blackness as the terror all around him rose to a screaming pitch.

—William Sleator in Into the Dream