Writing Tool: THE EMOTION THESAURUS

Photo credit: Goodreads

Every once in a while I’ll come across a book that I can’t help but rave about and recommend to everyone who will listen. The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi (who also run the ever-so-helpful blog The Bookshelf Muse) is one of those books. 

Before I rave about its awesomeness, here’s the Goodreads summary:

“One of the biggest problem areas for writers is conveying a character's emotions to the reader in a unique, compelling way. This book comes to the rescue by highlighting 75 emotions and listing the possible body language cues, thoughts, and visceral responses for each.  

Using its easy-to-navigate list format, readers can draw inspiration from character cues that range in intensity to match any emotional moment. The Emotion Thesaurus also tackles common emotion-related writing problems and provides methods to overcome them.  

This writing tool encourages authors to show, not tell emotion and is a creative brainstorming resource for any fiction project.”

I tweeted a while back that The Emotion Thesaurus is perpetually open in my Nook app while revising, and I wasn’t exaggerating. Whenever I reach a moment where I’m struggling to describe an emotion, or I get a CP note asking for more emotion from a character, I open up The Emotion Thesaurus.

It’s not a book that you necessarily read from cover to cover (although you’re more than welcome to), it’s a resource that you open when trying to describe a particular (or several) emotions. What I love about it is it not only lists body language cues, thoughts and physical responses, but it also lists cues of suppressed emotion (which I use all the time). As a bonus, it has writing tips at the end of every chapter.

To top it off, none other than Kristen Lamb recently recommended The Emotion Thesaurus in The Huffington Post (under #4) as have dozens of other writers across the web. And out of nearly 500 reviews on Goodreads, it has a 4.57 star average—and with good reason.

I honestly can’t recommend this book enough to writers of all stages. It will forever change the way you think about and write emotion—or at least, it did for me.

What resources do you use to help write emotion? 

Twitter-sized bites: 

Is THE EMOTION THESAURUS by @AngelaAckerman & @beccapuglisi on your bookshelf? Here's why it should be. (Click to tweet)  

Do you struggle with writing emotion? Then this wonderful writing tool may be exactly what you need. (Click to tweet)