The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Expression

Writing, as those in this craft know, is about balance and story. Balance the right amount of beats, dialogue, pacing, IM, imagery, description, backstory, characterization, location, etc. Admittedly, I get lazy and fall back on the tried and true in telling...especially conveying emotions. Heck, sharing them to someone else is hard; writing them? Harder yet without sounding corny, overblown, overdone, hoaky. You know, back in the day of daytime soaps and "Jerry Springer" takes their place now, LOL. I found THE EMOTION THESAURUS: A WRITER'S GUIDE TO CHARACTER EXPRESSION quite by accident. Stuck on how my cast should convey their elation, joy, frustration or guilt at different moments in my near-polished first novel, this book puts the intangible emotions in your hands and in your writing in concise, shirtsleeve terms. The section of "Techniques for Nonverbal Cues" is a gem with tips and tricks to not let your writing creep into the melodramatic stage, which I freely admit I sometimes do. Ackerman and Puglisi do a stellar job in showing how to depict guilt ("joking to lighten a mood") we'd rely on; or disgust ("spitting or throwing up") in someone or something. It's about body language, really, and emotions are hard as heck to hide through a physical or verbal motion. This reference, akin to people watching for fascinating verbal and nonverbal cues in a venue like Union Square in NYC or Market Street in Philly, can really nail for your cast their visceral reactions why they react as they do--and letting you take your reader where you wanted them to go. Since having this purchase, I reference this book frequently to convey what the characters' intentions are...and sometimes my own to channel it for them. It's hard work writing this tight and with this level of imagery, but in the end, your job is to churn your readers' imaginations as this book will do yours. My two faults--one technical, maybe, the other content: as a Kindle version, the TOC tends to go capital letters if you go back to the beginning; when you're in the middle of the emotion list you searched for, it reverts to lowercase. I find the latter easier to read in this form, however. The second: numbness is an emotion. If you aren't feeling anything, you're feeling that nonfeeling. And having posted this in the wake of the horrific events in Newtown, CT, Aurora, CO, and the mall in Ore., this reference would've been perfect to find something to nail down for me how my soul felt to this harrowing news. Words can't convey this level of sadness to the point where your soul cries. Sensing a void so spawning within, time alone is its only competitor in length. We've all experienced this, and some have used this for their writing. I have, and will again. Or it could be this level of despair doesn't have words to name it as "Despair" does in this book. It comes close, but even this emotion in your soul needs to not be described, and left alone for time to heal. Excellent book. I highly recommend it, and it's listed for a great price.

This is a great tool to help you get out of a description rut. As any writer knows, it's all too easy to fall back on the same handful of emotional responses (my characters "sigh" so much they have breathing problems). This book is essentially a list of physical and visceral reactions to the most common emotional responses. I find that it's a great brainstorming tool. Obviously it isn't meant to provide "exact" phrases you would use in your writing. It's more like a springboard to help you visualize your own characters and how they might react in ways you hadn't thought of. In that respect it's an excellent resource. My characters are much more three-dimensional and real as a result of this book. It IS a bit limited and the lists are a little repetitive. Granted, emotions like anxiety, fear, and dread overlap, and so do normal responses to those emotions, but a lot of the things listed are very generic, making it easy to loose the subtle nuances between those words. However - that's the WRITER'S job, not the thesaurus author's job, so I can't fault the book too much. I just wish it had more emotions listed than the basics that are covered. But overall it's an excellent resource and one I reach for whenever I'm struggling with my characters. I also reach for it whenever doing an editing pass, mainly as a way to make sure I'm not in a descriptive rut without even realizing it. My writing has definitely improved with use of this book and I plan to purchase the others in the series.

Actually I finished THE EMOTION THESAURUS earlier than admitted, but I hesitated on the review because it is not an easy work to define in its entirety. This reference work by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi, however, is an excellent follow-up to SELF-EDITING FOR FICTION WRITERS since both deal with the importance of showing instead of telling. Both works start the same, but the book by Renni Browne and Dave King, which I reviewed prior to this book, continues as a lecturing text giving extended advice to writers of novels and short stories. Ackerman and Puglisi, on the other hand, after a lengthy introduction where they emphasize the importance of nonverbal communication (body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, etc.) so that readers can connect with characters on an emotional level, offer a book of lists. As a reference tool, this work, like others, belongs within arm's reach of the writer's work station. It is unique in what it offers -- a compendium of emotions with attached subcategories to show how they might be used on the page in a believable manner. This must have been a grueling work to compile, drawing upon, as they mention, other writers in a critique circle. Two uniformly structured pages are devoted to one particular emotion shown in caps at the top of the left page. Each word is followed by a short definition. The first subcategory is "Physical signals" followed by examples of about 30 words or short phrases. The next subcategories are "Internal Sensations," "Mental Responses," "Cues of Acute or Long-term Determination," "May Escalate to (other emotions and page numbers)," and "Cues of Suppressed Determination." Writer's tips are provided at the bottom of each right page, supplying advice on how to present or utilize these emotions in a believable manner. This is not, as I mentioned at the outset, an easy work to read through because it does not flow with the continuity if a typical text. For me, it was a matter of highlighting certain examples of words and phrases which showed what characters could be feeling, selecting words that I might use in my current work of fiction in progress, particularly works that would apply to the immediacy of a situation rather than to those that were more extensive and required reaching beyond a particular scene. Anyway, use this book as it benefits you. It is certainly accessible.

What a find! Every author struggles with finding "the right" words sometimes, and this thesaurus, even in book-form, is a very easy-to-use and helpful support for more original writing or just to add more spice to a story. It gave me tons of ideas of how to approach a sentence differently and find new ways to express characters' feelings than just with the eyes...it totally improved my writing. Even just as a read-through it is useful to give thought-provoking impulses one can work with.

色々な表現が楽しめて、とても面白いです。単なる辞書とは、楽しみ方が違います。

Un must-have pour tous les écrivains! Excellent travail et les autres tomes de cette série sont tout aussi bien. Dommage qu'il n'existe pas de traduction

Another great addition to the series by Ackerman & Puglisi. I think I've got just about all of these in eBook format. I think it's time to get them in paperback as well. They've all been brilliant resources to help my writing.

Love, love, love this book! It helps me to express a way a character goes through without actually instead of having to tell the readers.