Emotional outlet

How many ways can you think of to express your character’s anxiety? His happiness? Her anger?

Does your antagonist always look behind him? Does your hero clench his fists every time? Does your heroine’s mouth flatten over and over?

A traditional thesaurus may not help when you want to describe the actions and reactions of your characters in different ways. What you need is the Emotion Thesaurus, brainchild of The Bookshelf Muse bloggers Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi.

It’s awesome!

Not only do they have lists of ideas for showing a character’s emotion through action, they have thesauri for Settings, Weather, Colors and Textures, and Character Traits.

This is writerly gold.

I've gotten to the point where I just leave the site open in my browser when I'm writing. Bookmark it now and you'll thank me later.

Got any great resources up your fingerless mittens? Please share!

0 Comments

Curtis

6 / Dec / 2011

Gwen,

I went there. You are right. Writerly gold.

While there I thumbed through and found this– Writers Knowledge Base. http://hiveword.com/wkb/search . A collation of internet wide “great blog posts on writing, publishing and marketing.”

With all the information, advice, instruction, inspiration, coaching, tips, variety-of-ways-to-see understand and write stories you would think it would get easier. 🙂

The show and tell of story telling has become a cottage industry.
- Gwen Hernandez
  
  7 / Dec / 2011
  
  Thanks for the link, Curtis. You’re right, with all that help out there it seems like it should be easier. I guess in the end, it still comes down to us alone at the keyboard.
  - Curtis
    
    7 / Dec / 2011
    
    After listing five of his leading distractions, Hemingway wrote to his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald in a letter dated 1926. “Trying unusual experiment of a writer–writing.”
    - Gwen Hernandez
      
      8 / Dec / 2011
      
      Great quote, Curtis. Sadly, so true. 😉
Angela Ackerman

7 / Dec / 2011

Gwen, thank you so much for mentioning The Bookshelf Muse! I am so happy to hear it helps you with your writing. That’s what we’re all about. 🙂

have a great week!

Angela @ The Bookshelf Muse
- Gwen Hernandez
  
  7 / Dec / 2011
  
  Thanks for providing such a great resource, Angela! And for stopping by. 🙂
Christine Bloom

7 / Dec / 2011

Thanks for sharing this great source, Gwen. Another one I like is

http://center-for-nonverbal-studies.org/10301.html
- Gwen Hernandez
  
  7 / Dec / 2011
  
  Absolutely, Christine! Thanks for sharing yours. That’s a good one.
- Curtis
  
  7 / Dec / 2011
  
  Well, anyway. One of these days I will pay attention to which “reply” I click. 🙂
Curtis

7 / Dec / 2011

The bibliography associated with this site is worth the trip.
This is a pandora’s box of the psychological accessed through non-verbal gestures. Talk about adding depth to a character. Thank you
Amber Lea Starfire

8 / Dec / 2011

Thanks for this, Gwen. What a wonderful resource!
- Gwen Hernandez
  
  10 / Dec / 2011
  
  Oops, Amber Lea, sorry I missed your comment the other day. You’re welcome. 😉
Crystal Posey

9 / Dec / 2011

It’s one of my favorite blogs ever. Genius.
- Gwen Hernandez
  
  10 / Dec / 2011
  
  Hey, Crystal. The site hit my radar a few months ago, but I forgot about it and only recently went back to check it out. Now I’m hooked.
1writethere41am

26 / Jan / 2013

Hi agree with all you say about the Emotion Thesaurus; it’s a great resource. A couple I would suggest to add are; “Writing for Emotional Impact” by Karl Ilesias – it tells you how to write emotion into your work and although for screenwriters it works equally well for novellist. I love this book.

And the other one is “The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers” by Christopher Vogler again centred on films but equally valid for novels. This book is criticised as being too simplistic by some and too formulaic but that is it’s strength; it’s great for beginners to really understand story structure and is a great help when writing plots. I think of it as essential reading first then one can progress onto Story by Robert McKee etc to get deep own into scene structure and beats and character curves. Read “The Writer’s Journey” and you will be amazed at how you can suddenly understand how most Hollywood films are structured and how most novels work; I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Gwen Hernandez

26 / Jan / 2013

1writethere41am: Thanks for the recommendations. I’m a big fan of Vogler, Hauge, Snyder, and McKee. Each one has brought me to a new level of understanding regarding structure–and other aspects of writing–as has Larry Brooks. Good luck with your own writing! 🙂