In this video, I share a collection of books to help you expand your descriptive vocabulary and enrich the inner and outer lives of your characters.
Grab the books! Writers Helping Writers bookstore
Transcript:
Stephanie (00:06):
Hello writers. Welcome to the third video in a series where I share my favorite writing resources with you. Today I wanna make sure that you know about the series of books from the awesome folks at Writers Helping Writers. We’ve been talking lately about creating and describing layered and three-dimensional characters, so this fits right in. They’ve created a unique set of books to help you find the exact words and language to engross your reader in your characters, your setting, and the conflict in your story. Their series of thesauruses (thesaurusae?) is widely recognized as a high quality resource. When it comes to description, they have the original Emotion Thesaurus, which I have here. For each emotion they have a two page list, which includes a definition, physical signals and behaviors, internal sensations, responses, signs that the emotion is being suppressed, emotions that can escalate or deescalate to, and more.
Stephanie (01:04):
There’s also a companion book to this one called Emotional Amplifiers. Then they have books for describing urban or rural settings, an occupation thesaurus, two volumes of the Conflict Thesaurus, an emotional wound thesaurus, and thesauruses for both positive and negative traits. These books are just fun to sit with and gather ideas, but they’re also highly practical and extremely useful when it comes to deeply understanding your characters, where they are, and what’s happening around them. The link to Writers Helping Writers is below in the description, so be sure to check them out. For more book recommendations for writers and other novel writing tips, be sure to subscribe and please share this video with anyone you think could use it. I’ll see you next time. Happy writing.