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

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.

*Note (7/13/12): I located the linked navigation a while back, and it's actually very well done. Excellent. Forgot to update the review.I'm rounding up because my only complaint is that I couldn't find a linked list/index to go from one entry to the next, back, or otherwise. I am going to search around the book to see if it does indeed exist and to see if it merely escaped me on my first pass. I'll knock off half a star for that, but I'm going to round up because this truly is a wonderful writing aid. (I'll amend my review if I locate it or if someone points it out.)A wide variety of emotions are given in this book, each of the entries supplying information on the overall effects each emotional state has on people, from what others might notice or see to what a person might feel inside. Thus, it's a wonderful tool for examples in any point of view and wonderfully supports the modern, accepted style: third person limited. However, this tool could just as easily be used for any style or point of view.In my opinion, this guide could be useful to both new and experienced writers of fiction. For the former, this is an amazing resource for learning how to write convincing characters and see how emotions translate into writing (then, hopefully, provoking sympathy, empathy, or whatever feeling you wish to evoke in the reader). For the latter, I would say that this can easily be a go-to reference for experienced writers to shake things up a bit and to avoid the long hours of research it would require to do the legwork already done in this guide. I've loaded this book onto my Kindle, and it's ready to go, along with my thesaurus, dictionary, and other reference material. This is one book that will be permanently loaded onto my device.

I'm a very visual person. I love movies. I love bright colors. I love watching people (not as a creeper). So I looooooooove seeing emotion. One of the things I enjoy the most is watching people being human--experiencing emotion. So when I'm writing a scene, I always ask myself, "If I were an actor, how would I portray this?"It's funny how you'll get a pile of books that have similarities that bug you. This week, it's books where the author attempted to show the non-verbal indicators of emotion, but did so using major indicators. Frustration was shown by "flinging her body onto the bed and throwing her stuffed bear across the room with a wild screech". Oh yeah. I got that I was supposed to be frustrated, but I also felt like I was two years old. This particular heroine wasn't immature. She was supposed to be quiet, withdrawn, subdued. That's not subdued.My personal opinion is that these are authors trying to show and not tell, but who are still trying to figure out the best way to do that. I recommend The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide To Character Expression by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglist. I'm not saying this because I'm making any money on the link. I'm not. This book was actually very helpful even to me. I say this with a note of surprise because I am so very visual and I have my own internal journal of visual emotion indicators. This book goes into the physical signs of someone you're watching. This is great for first person and third person limited because you can convey by watching. Let's go to frustration for example.If I had Synn (my mc in Fall of Sky City (A Steampunk Fantasy Sci-Fi Adventure Novel) (Devices of War) ) talking to Joshua who was frustrated with me, I could have Joshua do the following:-narrow eyes in Synn's direction and pinch the lips together-tap his fingers against the table staring at something that's pointedly not Synn-Give an impatient snort or sneerNow, if Joshua were really hot--because he does have a hot temper--he could do something more dramatic.-swear at Synn-get up and start pacing, gesturing wildly-claw the hands and then relax themThese are all straight from the Emotion Thesaurus. Now, you can scoff, if you like, but if you're one of the authors who hasn't figured this out yet, I'm going to laugh maniacally at you as I review your book. Now, here it is, all put together."Joshua raised his clawed hands, his lips pinched in frustration, before he turned away, his hands relaxed at his sides."The Emotion Thesaurus also goes into the internal sensations and the mental responses, and they go into signs of acute or long-term emotions. It's a really fantastic tool I wish more authors were using!

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.

I love this dictionary, and anything put out by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi is (re)commendable. But I have a problem whenever using reference material in kindle format -- I don't use it. That is why I bought this one in paperback, and I am most grateful that I have done so -- this is a great book for anyone writing in whatever field, although fiction writers are most likely to profit from using it.

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

This is such a useful book to keep on my writing desk.

I often struggle when I have to depict my characters' emotions, and this book is extremely useful on that regard. It even has some tips at the end of each chapter on how to better convey the characters' feelings, also the index is extremely well done, and it's very easy to find what you're looking for. I never feel lost and the chapters (each one giving suggestions on how to portray a specific emotion) are very easy to read. Definitely a worthy purchase if you need help on portraying emotions while writing.