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The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide To Character Expression
Written by: Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi
Published by: Create Space (print), and Amazon Indie (ebook)
Date Published: May 2012
ISBN: 978-1475004953
For: Writers of all genres

Digital review copy was given to me by the author in exchange for an honest review. I loved the book so much that I bought a print copy for myself.



Using emotion well is important in every novel. Emotion and body language evoke responses in readers, help them connect to your characters and root for them, and are, I believe, part of what keeps a reader engaged in your book, turning the pages to find out what happens next. (Another part of that is suspense and tension, and another part is strong writing–but emotion and body language are an important part. Without them, a story is empty.) Emotion greatly influences characters’ decisions, reactions and actions–and it is what helps readers relate to your characters. Without emotion, there’s no depth or point of connection in a story. So it’s important for every writer to master writing emotion, body language, and character motivation.

Writers all have favorite phrases and body language that we gravitate towards, especially in early drafts–phrases and body language that can get quickly repetitive and annoying when overused. Think “she nodded” for a character agreeing, “she bit her lip” for a nervous or anxious character, or “he clenched his fists” for an angry one–or whatever your immediate go-to reaction is. I’ve found that I tend to use the body language and emotional cues that I’ve used or seen most often in my own life–and I forget to think outside that, at least in early drafts. But it’s important to show varied responses, or to find different ways of showing emotion or describing emotion (internally and externally).

That is where The Emotion Thesaurus comes in. No matter how good you are at writing emotion (and I think I write strong emotion evocatively and well), The Emotion Thesaurus can spur you to write emotion and body language even better.

The Emotion Thesaurus is laid out in an easy-to-use format–with each emotion alphabetized. You can use the book immediately with your writing–just dive in–without having to read the entire book. Say you have a character who is experiencing fear. You know the body and internal reactions you’d use–but you want to make sure you don’t get too repetitive. So you just look up fear in the index, turn to the page (in this case, 76), and you’ll find a ton of physical signals, internal sensations, metal reactions, cues of acute or long-term fear, and cues of suppressed fear. This is incredibly useful–reminding you both of how a character experiences fear internally and physically, AND how others outside the character might observe that fear. It can help give you greater insight into your character or the way they might respond to a situation, or remind you to amp it up when needed.

You’ll also find “May Escalate to” where you can see other emotions and reactions that fear might move into. You might not agree with every response to every emotion listed–but you’re not supposed to. How each person experiences emotion can be very individual. But reading through these lists can help you think beyond the easy, cliched responses, and get to something that better describes the experience. It will help you think of even more responses, and other ways to talk about emotions and body language, and break out of any ruts you might get in describing them.

In the beginning of the book, before the emotions are listed, there’s a section on “Writing Nonverbal Emotion: Avoiding Common Problems” such as telling, melodrama, cliched emotions, over reliance on dialogue or thoughts, and misusing backstory. This is another thoughtful and helpful section. But you don’t need to read it before immediately using the emotion sections to jumpstart your own character responses. There’s also a good reminder to use setting (which can show or enhance emotion), twist cliches or use fresh ideas to describe things,

I think The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide To Character Expression is a unique book–I haven’t found anything quite so focused or helpful on emotions and body language specifically for writers before–and I’ve been looking for a long time.

There are both an ebook version and a print version available. I prefer the print version–because it is SO easy to just flip the pages to get to the emotion you want, and then flip to other pages that are related. It’s much easier (in my opinion) to use print books as reference books. BUT when you’re on the go, it’s nice to have the ebook version handy. I’ve used both while writing.

I highly recommend The Emotion Thesaurus for writers of all genres.

Do you use Gmail? I do, regularly. And I have a signature I use. I like my email to look professional–and I also want to make sure my books are there, identifying me. It is SO annoying to, every time I respond to an email, have to cut and paste my email all the way from the bottom of the other person’s email. If that bugs you, too, here is a quick and easy way to fix it permanently in Gmail! I am SO glad I found this!

Lately I’ve really been wanting software that allows me to easily organize all my notes, research, photos for characters, emails, etc for the manuscripts I’m working on. I use MS Word to write my novels (since I have to deliver it through MS Word–it’s industry standard), but it’s cumbersome and non-intuitive to add all the extra information that comes up while you’re writing or editing a draft.

I was putting links to research articles, character names and meanings, photos that felt like they fit my characters, all at the bottom of my manuscript, but it was a pain to sort through. And then I had a separate file for notes on what I wanted to add or change or do a separate edit for in the novel, and character names, descriptions, etc for all the characters of all my books…and it just got to be hard to sort through all the material. I also have so many bookmarks of great articles and information that I don’t want to lose–but that become hard to find. I was using OneNote for a while (which comes with MS Office), but it didn’t feel intuitive or easy to use, somehow.

And then I remembered a program I’d tried years ago. It hadn’t quite worked for me then, but it’s gotten so much better–in fact, I think it may be my dream software.

What is it? You guessed it–Evernote. And it’s free. It’s also easy to use, does all the things I want it to do, and things I hadn’t even thought of yet that are super appealing. There’s also a handy web clipper tool that you can add to most browsers. I easily installed it for Chrome and it works perfectly.

A few things I love about Evernote. You can:

• use it on all your various computers and phones, including Windows, Mac, and Android, and through their website
  
  
• sync everything in Evernote through all your devices and access it on any of them. So once you’ve entered something from one place, it’s automatically updated on all your devices, including online. That means you can use it at home, on the go, at a friend’s house–basically anywhere that has internet access (or, if you don’t have internet access but still have your tablet/laptop, there, too.)
  
  
• easily and quickly clip any article online
  
  
• create separate notebooks to easily organize all your various projects or topics (this works very well for the way my brain works)
  
  
• forward or send emails to Evernote, even to specific notebooks
  
  
• drag and drop photos, video, even music
  
  
• easily search and find articles, research, etc that you want–even *text within a document* (which is crucial to me; sometimes I forget what I titled a document and where I stored it)
  
  
• tag any note with tags that make sense to you
  
  
• have everything all in one place AND see everything easily. I love that all the different forms of media can all be accessed in one program (and within specific notebooks), with a file-like list on the left, the articles and notes down the middle, and new notes on the right. SO easy to see and find everything I want!
  
  
• attach paper notes (just take a photo and send it to Evernote) and audio notes
  
  

The ways I’m using it so far as a writer (and I’m only on my second day):

I’ve just ordered a book by face reader (or Face Pattern Recognition Expert) Naomi Tickle that I think will help me professionally as a writer, to make my characters even more believable, full, and complete, and also help me as a person navigating through the world. I think her books are great tools for writers to add more richness, depth, and credibility to our novels (or screenplays or plays for the stage).

Naomi does what the characters on the TV show Lie To Me do–read faces to know when people are lying or telling the truth, to predict their personality, behavior, and innate abilities just from their facial features. And she was actually interviewed for that show as an expert! She can tell from how fine your hair is whether you’re sensitive to noises and emotions, and from the curve of your forehead how creative you are. Her face readings are based on soft science first developed by Edward Jones, a judge, in the 1930s, and have a 92% accuracy level for personality assessment. I find it utterly fascinating!!

Naomi has several books, and I have a feeling I’ll be ordering many of them over time. For now, I chose What Makes People Tick and Why.

If you order a book directly from Naomi’s website, you get a free mini-reading.I did, and I loved what she said; she got so many things about me so accurately that I wouldn’t have thought people could see just from my face. It really impressed me! And it was also validating. (And no, I don’t get anything out of telling you that–I’m just passing along info that I think could help you.)

I’m excited to read her book, and am so looking forward to it! I think Naomi’s book will be an incredible tool as a writer and person.

You can also listen to an interview with Naomi, interviewed by Angela Treat Lyon.

As writers, it’s important to backup our files regularly so that we don’t lose any of our work. That’s true for anyone who uses documents. I use Dropbox to quickly and easily backup my writing–for free, and so can you. You get 2GB free. Once you’ve set up your account and specified the folder you want backed up, you don’t have to do anything–it automatically backs up and syncs your files every time a file changes. You can access your files securely online, even from your smartphone, as well as your computer, knowing that you never have to remember to back up your work again or worry that you didn’t back it up.

I lost an entire manuscript that I had to rewrite from scratch before I discovered DropBox, due to a hard drive failure. I’m grateful I found DropBox. I hope you’ll find it as easy to use as I do.

There’s a new service called MUSO that takes down illegal copies of your books (well, you look at each copy to make sure it’s illegal, and can request the take downs and apparently they happen pretty fast).

the link to the article that discusses this is here.

and you can sign up for MUSO here.

There’s a fee–$15/month for up to 60 files taken down, $25 after that. (I found this out by clicking on “account” *after* I’d signed up.)

I signed up, and searched for any copies of my books–and there were none. So for me right now it’s not helpful. But perhaps in a year or a few years I’ll want to use it. I don’t know.

There’s also a part of me that thinks like Seth Godin–that when our books are out there freely, it helps encourage more readers and more people buying our books (the way libraries do). But I know that’s not a popular view with most other authors, and I’m still thinking on that.

A few (well-known) authors I know who used MUSO found between 6-38 illegal copies of their books, which they’ve had taken down. It also seemed that it was a fast, easy, efficient way of taking down a lot of files at once, instead of having to email their editors or publishers each time they found one…

If you sign up, you need to put your name in the “campaign” section–and then it will search for all your works by your name.

So, it’s up to you, whether you think it’s worth it or not, and if you’re only trying it out, I guess it’ll cost you the $15 for one month….