The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Psychological Trauma

Author: Becca Puglisi
Publisher: JADD Publishing
ISBN: 0999296302
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 612

Book Description
Readers connect to characters with depth, ones who have experienced life’s ups and downs. To deliver key players that are both realistic and compelling, writers must know them intimately—not only who they are in the present story, but also what made them that way. Of all the formative experiences in a character’s past, none are more destructive than emotional wounds. The aftershocks of trauma can change who they are, alter what they believe, and sabotage their ability to achieve meaningful goals, all of which will affect the trajectory of your story. Identifying the backstory wound is crucial to understanding how it will shape your character’s behavior, and The Emotional Wound Thesaurus can help. Inside, you’ll find: * A database of traumatic situations common to the human experience * An in-depth study on a wound’s impact, including the fears, lies, personality shifts, and dysfunctional behaviors that can arise from different painful events * An extensive analysis of character arc and how the wound and any resulting unmet needs fit into it * Techniques on how to show the past experience to readers in a way that is both engaging and revelatory while avoiding the pitfalls of info dumps and telling * A showcase of popular characters and how their traumatic experiences reshaped them, leading to very specific story goals * A Backstory Wound Profile tool that will enable you to document your characters’ negative past experiences and the aftereffects Root your characters in reality by giving them an authentic wound that causes difficulties and prompts them to strive for inner growth to overcome it. With its easy-to-read format and over 100 entries packed with information, The Emotional Wound Thesaurus is a crash course in psychology for creating characters that feel incredibly real to readers.

The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Expression (2nd Edition)

Author: Becca Puglisi
Publisher: JADD Publishing
ISBN: 0999296353
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 541

Book Description
The bestselling Emotion Thesaurus, often hailed as “the gold standard for writers” and credited with transforming how writers craft emotion, has now been expanded to include 56 new entries! One of the biggest struggles for writers is how to convey emotion to readers in a unique and compelling way. When showing our characters’ feelings, we often use the first idea that comes to mind, and they end up smiling, nodding, and frowning too much. If you need inspiration for creating characters’ emotional responses that are personalized and evocative, this ultimate show-don’t-tell guide for emotion can help. It includes: • Body language cues, thoughts, and visceral responses for over 130 emotions that cover a range of intensity from mild to severe, providing innumerable options for individualizing a character’s reactions • A breakdown of the biggest emotion-related writing problems and how to overcome them • Advice on what should be done before drafting to make sure your characters’ emotions will be realistic and consistent • Instruction for how to show hidden feelings and emotional subtext through dialogue and nonverbal cues • And much more! The Emotion Thesaurus, in its easy-to-navigate list format, will inspire you to create stronger, fresher character expressions and engage readers from your first page to your last.

The Positive Trait Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Attributes

Author: Becca Puglisi
Publisher: JADD Publishing
ISBN: 0989772535
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 518

Book Description
It’s a writer’s job to create compelling characters who can withstand life’s fallout without giving up. But building authentic, memorable heroes is no easy task. To forge realistic characters, we must hobble them with flaws that set them back while giving them positive attributes to help them achieve their goals. So how do writers choose the right blend of strengths for their characters—attributes that will render them admirable and worth rooting for—without making it too easy for them to succeed? Character creation can be hard, but it’s about to get a lot easier. Inside The Positive Trait Thesaurus, you’ll find: * A large selection of attributes to choose from when building a personality profile. Each entry lists possible causes for why a trait might emerge, along with associated attitudes, behaviors, thoughts, and emotions * Real character examples from literature, film, or television to show how an attribute drives actions and decisions, influences goals, and steers relationships * Advice on using positive traits to immediately hook readers while avoiding common personality pitfalls * Insight on human needs and morality, and how each determines the strengths that emerge in heroes and villains alike * Information on the key role positive attributes play within the character arc, and how they’re vital to overcoming fatal flaws and achieving success * Downloadable tools for organizing a character’s attributes and providing a deeper understanding of his past, his needs, and the emotional wounds he must overcome If you find character creation difficult or worry that your cast members all seem the same, The Positive Trait Thesaurus is brimming with ideas to help you develop one-of-a-kind, dynamic characters that readers will love. Extensively indexed, with entries written in a user-friendly list format, this brainstorming resource is perfect for any character creation project.

The Negative Trait Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Flaws

Author: Becca Puglisi
Publisher: JADD Publishing
ISBN: 0989772527
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 539

Book Description
Crafting likable, interesting characters is a balancing act, and finding that perfect mix of strengths and weaknesses can be difficult. Not only does a well-drawn protagonist need positive attributes to help him succeed, he must also have flaws that humanize him and give him something to overcome. The same is true of villains and the rest of the story’s supporting cast. So how can writers figure out which flaws best fit their characters? Which negative traits will create personality clashes and conflict while making success difficult? Nothing adds complexity like character flaws. Inside The Negative Trait Thesaurus you’ll find: * A vast collection of flaws to explore when building a character’s personality. Each entry includes possible causes, attitudes, behaviors, thoughts, and related emotions * Real examples from literature, film, or television to show how each flaw can create life challenges and relational friction * Advice on building layered and memorable characters from the ground up * An in-depth look at backstory, emotional wounds, and how pain twists a character’s view of himself and his world, influencing behavior and decision making * A flaw-centric exploration of character arc, relationships, motivation, and basic needs * Tips on how to best show a character’s flaws to readers while avoiding common pitfalls * Downloadable tools to aid writers in character creation The Negative Trait Thesaurus sheds light on your character’s dark side. Written in list format and fully indexed, this brainstorming resource is perfect for creating deep, flawed characters readers will relate to.

The Conflict Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Obstacles, Adversaries, and Inner Struggles (Volume 1)

Author: Becca Puglisi
Publisher: JADD Publishing
ISBN: 1736152300
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 562

Book Description
Every story starts with a character who is motivated by a need and has a goal that can resolve it. Whether their objective is to find a life partner, bring a killer to justice, overthrow a cruel regime, or something else, conflict transforms a story premise into something fresh. Physical obstacles, adversaries, moral dilemmas, deep-seated doubts and personal struggles…these not only block a character’s external progress, they become a gateway for internal growth. The right conflict will build tension and high stakes, challenge characters as they traverse their arcs, and most importantly, keep readers emotionally invested from beginning to end. Inside Volume 1 of The Conflict Thesaurus, you’ll find: * A myriad of conflict options in the form of relationship friction, failures and mistakes, moral dilemmas and temptations, pressure and ticking clocks, and no-win scenarios * An analysis of each scenario that maps out possible complications and catastrophes, internal struggles, and the stressful impacts on a character’s basic human needs * Guidance on using conflict to influence your protagonist's character arc through opportunities for failure and success * Master class instruction on internal conflict: what it is, why it's important, and how to incorporate it at the scene and story levels * Information about the role conflict plays in generating high stakes that are personally significant to the character, upping the tension for readers * A breakdown of the various adversaries your character might encounter along the way Don't give your character a break. Keep the hits coming with a variety of obstacles that will force them to work harder to get what they want. With over 100 entries arranged in a user-friendly format, The Conflict Thesaurus is the guide you need to write intense and satisfying fiction readers won’t forget.

The Emotional Craft of Fiction

Author: Donald Maass
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1440348375
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
Engage Your Readers with Emotion While writers might disagree over showing versus telling or plotting versus pantsing, none would argue this: If you want to write strong fiction, you must make your readers feel. The reader's experience must be an emotional journey of its own, one as involving as your characters' struggles, discoveries, and triumphs are for you. That's where The Emotional Craft of Fiction comes in. Veteran literary agent and expert fiction instructor Donald Maass shows you how to use story to provoke a visceral and emotional experience in readers. Topics covered include: • emotional modes of writing • beyond showing versus telling • your story's emotional world • moral stakes • connecting the inner and outer journeys • plot as emotional opportunities • invoking higher emotions, symbols, and emotional language • cascading change • story as emotional mirror • positive spirit and magnanimous writing • the hidden current that makes stories move Readers can simply read a novel...or they can experience it. The Emotional Craft of Fiction shows you how to make that happen.

A Thesaurus of English Word Roots

Author: Horace Gerald Danner
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442233265
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1007

Book Description
Horace G. Danner’s A Thesaurus of English Word Roots is a compendium of the most-used word roots of the English language. As Timothy B. Noone notes in his foreword: “Dr. Danner’s book allows you not only to build up your passive English vocabulary, resulting in word recognition knowledge, but also gives you the rudiments for developing your active English vocabulary, making it possible to infer the meaning of words with which you are not yet acquainted. Your knowledge can now expand and will do so exponentially as your awareness of the roots in English words and your corresponding ability to decode unfamiliar words grows apace. This is the beginning of a fine mental linguistic library: so enjoy!” In A Thesaurus of English Word Roots, all word roots are listed alphabetically, along with the Greek or Latin words from which they derive, together with the roots’ original meanings. If the current meaning of an individual root differs from the original meaning, that is listed in a separate column. In the examples column, the words which contain the root are then listed, starting with their prefixes, for example, dysacousia, hyperacousia. These root-starting terms then are followed by terms where the root falls behind the word, e.g., acouesthesia and acoumeter. These words are followed by words where the root falls in the middle or the end, as in such terms as bradyacusia and odynacusis.. In this manner, A Thesaurus of English Word Roots places the word in as many word families as there are elements in the word. This work will interest linguists and philologists and anyone interested in the etymological aspects of English language.

Character Reactions from Head to Toe

Author: Valerie Howard (Writer on Juvenile literature)
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781070178394
Category : Creative writing
Languages : en
Pages : 89

Book Description
A LIST OF 1,000 CHARACTER REACTIONS As an author, are your characters always sighing and nodding? Did you just sigh and nod? If so, this handy little booklet is for you! Sometimes as new (or even experienced) authors, we can't think of just the right action for our character's body in a particular scene, and we need something to get the creative juices flowing. This is a quick and easy reference tool just for that purpose. Jam-packed with a list of 1,000 physical reactions a character can have, organized by body part from head to toe to internal organs, you'll never be left scratching your head when you need to find just the right way to describe your character's reactions! Excerpt: FOREHEAD Forehead wrinkling Forehead slicking with sweat Slapping or hitting forehead with palm Banging forehead against a surface Wiping moisture off forehead Pressing fingers against forehead Tapping forehead with pencil or finger Forehead baking with a fever Resting forehead in hand(s) Splaying back of hand on forehead as if faint Poking forehead with thumb to jog memory Banging forehead with fists to stop crazy thoughts Indie Author Resources Book 1

Strong Verbs for Fiction Writers

Author: Valerie Howard (Writer on Juvenile literature)
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781076239860
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 109

Book Description
A LIST OF 1,000 VERBS Are you searching for stronger verbs for your works of fiction? Aren't we all? This booklet contains a list of 1,000 strong verbs to help you replace the weaker verbs in your fiction writing as you self-edit your work. Ready to weed out the weak verbs and not-so-helpful adverbs in your writing and replace them with strong verbs? Let's get started! Indie Author Resources Book 2

Boris Ate a Thesaurus

Author: Neil Klayman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780983977407
Category : Books and reading
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
A hungry boy learns that books are for reading and not for swallowing after he eats a thesaurus and starts speaking in synonyms.