I found this interesting article:
Why Do We Sigh? | Psychology Today
My question: Should a first-person character tell us they sighed?
Sighing is an audible and visual reaction. But maybe a first-person character would only observe this in others. Would a first-person character just express the frustration in dialogue (internal and audible) and in physical actions?
I’d love feedback on this from fiction writers and those who read fiction.
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I think the POV character can sigh once in a while. The character can feel his own sigh and hear it as well, but we shouldn’t use it as a dialogue tag. People can’t sigh words. So if the writer is going to have the character sigh, it should be done in a beat or narrative.