Understanding and reporting students' affective experiences with mathematics is difficult if those experiences do not resonate with personal experiences. Utilising fiction-writing in narrative reporting can be a technique that helps both the researcher and the reader of the research report to immerse themselves in the student's experiential world. In this article, the author explores some methodological justifications for such writing, giving an example of the use of fiction-writing techniques in a narrative account of a student who experiences anxiety in an interaction with her mathematics teacher.