THE CRAFT OF WRITING — MAY 2024
This year the CRAFT OF WRITING blog is focusing on Aspects of the Novel, such as Plot, Dialogue, Characterization, etc. Recently, we’ve had some wonderful guests to help us understand how to use these tools in our writing, including James Scott Bell on Voice, DiAnn Mills on Plotting, Debbie Burke on Antagonists, and Randy Ingermanson on Scenes. If you missed any of these, go to kaydibianca.com/blog and choose the post you want to revisit.
This month, we’re going to address perhaps the most important aspect of novel writing: Emotion. And I’m excited to welcome back two well-known authorities on the subject: Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. As everyone knows, these two authors put together the wildly popular Emotion Thesaurus, and they have recently been working on a related book: the Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus.
So prepare to ramp up the emotion in your works by joining the conversation with Angela and Becca.
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Once again, we’re doing something fun for this interview. The name of each person who enters a comment will be put into the drawing for the unique “Wilbur and Orville 1903” Propeller pen, hand-crafted by my friend and colleague Steve Hooley. Steve has made several of these pens to celebrate the release of my latest novel, Lacey’s Star: A Lady Pilot-in-Command Novel, and I couldn’t be more honored. The pen is made from Ash, one of the woods the Wright brothers used to build their first aircraft. So join the conversation and earn a chance to win. I’ll post the name of the winner after 9 PM Central Time tomorrow night.
(Previous 2024 winners are not eligible to win.)
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Welcome back to the Craft of Writing blog, Angela and Becca, and thank you for joining us!
What part does emotion play in novel writing?
In some ways, emotion is the novel, because the words we choose will steer readers toward what we want them to feel. Is the noise emanating from that dark room a sing-song hum, a melody whispered to a child at bedtime? Or is it a slow, heavy scrape, conjuring the image of a monstrous axe blade being dragged across the floor? As the writer, we choose what we intend readers to feel, and shape our description accordingly. When we do this well, reading becomes an immersive, powerful experience.
To ensure readers are drawn in, though, we must make sure they emotionally connect to our characters first and foremost. We do this by revealing their human layers as they navigate the world around them, showing how they feel, what they need, want, fear, and think. When we do this well, readers connect to our characters because life is an emotional journey, and they find common ground. When we show what’s going on within a character, readers come to see them as someone real. They begin to empathize and become invested in what happens next.
The Emotion Thesaurus is a very popular writing book. Why did you decide to write it, and when was it first published? Have you added to the thesaurus over the years?
The Emotion Thesaurus was basically born from necessity. As a new fiction writer, I noticed my characters were always shrugging, smiling, and shuffling their feet. I didn’t seem to know any other way to convey those feelings. Meanwhile, Angela’s characters were constantly shaking their heads. There was no resource out there to help us find new ways to express emotions, so we started making lists of possible cues for different feelings. And that’s how The Emotion Thesaurus got started.
When we started our blog in 2008, we decided to feature one emotion each week, and people just went wild. We were getting requests for specific emotions, and many people wanted their own copy of the whole collection in book form. So in 2012, we published it. And we released it again in 2019, expanding the thesaurus from 75 to 130 emotions and revamping the front matter to include more instructive content on how to show (not tell) character emotion.
Lately, you’ve been working on a complementary book, the Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus. Tell us about that one.
When Becca and I were exploring different entries for The Emotion Thesaurus, we discovered an adjacent topic – states and conditions that were not emotions themselves, but affected them, causing a person to become more emotionally reactive (so perfect for storytelling). We gave them a name: Emotion Amplifiers. Amplifiers are an added condition or situational burden that characters must cope with on top of everything else. They’re a challenge, conflict, and emotional destabilizer rolled into one, capable of causing physical, cognitive, and psychological discomfort. Best of all, because they can cause characters to lose control of their emotions, it paves the way for mistakes, poor judgment, and missteps, which is bad for the character, but great for the story!
Can you give us an example or two about how to use the Emotion Thesaurus and the Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus to improve our work?
The Emotion Thesaurus gives authors ideas on how to convey a character’s emotions in fresh ways that readers will instantly understand. Each emotion has a list of physical behaviors, internal sensations, and mental cues that are associated with that feeling so authors can browse the options and fine-tune them to fit their character.
Amplifiers, as Angela mentioned, are states that ramp up the character’s emotions. Pain, illness, exhaustion, intoxication—conditions like these destabilize the character, elevating their emotions and making them more likely to make a mistake, act rashly, or explode. So when you want a character to have a bigger reaction or dig themselves deeper into a hole, an amplifier will often do the trick. They’re also good for providing opportunities for personal growth, since each amplifier situation will generate a choice for the character: continue relying on ineffective methods to deal with what they’re facing, or try a healthier way?
Do you have plans for future craft of writing books?
We are always thinking about the next book – there are so many great topics we like to do a deep dive into to help writers use them more effectively in the story, because this is what helps their books rise above all the rest. We have not yet settled on the next one…it might be on fears, or character tropes and types, or something else. We tend to pick the topic we feel writers need the most help with because there’s not a lot of resources available.
Where can we find out more about you and your books?
The Bookstore page at our blog, Writers Helping Writers, contains information on all our books, including sample entries and purchasing information.
Thank you, Angela and Becca, for being with us today.
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Meet Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi
Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi are writing coaches, international speakers, and co-authors of the bestselling book, The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression (now an expanded second edition) and its many sequels. Their books are available in nine languages, are sourced by universities, recommended by agents and editors, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, and psychologists around the world. To date, this series has sold over 1.2 million copies.
Long-time writing partners, Angela and Becca are passionate about helping others, especially writers. To this end, they co-founded Writers Helping Writers, a popular description hub for writers, and One Stop for Writers, an innovative creativity portal for one-of-a-kind tools that give writers exactly what they need to craft unbelievably rich stories and characters.
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Cassie Deakin is a talented private pilot, but she finds herself on an emotional roller coaster when she teams up with Deputy Frank White to hunt for a murderer.
Buy on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, or Apple Books.
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Good morning, Angela and Becca and Kay.
You’re keeping very busy this morning hopping from Kay’s blog here to Sue’s on The Kill Zone. I’m impressed.
Thanks for the information on emotion amplifiers. The book sounds very interesting, It’s on my list.
Good morning, Steve, and thank you for the gorgeous pen you donated for today’s winner!
I love the idea of emotion amplifiers. More ways to get emotion onto the page.
Have a great week.
HI Steve! Yes, we are all over today and for the week! It’s always a party when we release a new book. Thanks for reading our interview, and thanks Kay for having us by!
Hi Angela and Becca,
Emotion Thesaurus has long been on my reference shelf and I recommend it to other writers often. I’m eager to see the new Emotion Amplifier book. What a great concept. External stressors (amplifiers) heighten emotions and make it difficult to make good decisions. Another tool to torture our poor characters!
Thanks, Kay, for hosting Angela and Becca!
Good morning, Debbie!
I expect the antagonists you write about in your upcoming The Villain’s Journey book will enjoy using techniques defined in The Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus!
Thanks for stopping in. Have a great week.
Hi Debbie! Yes, emotion amplifiers are a great topic, because it has one foot in emotion, and the other in conflict, and our story needs plenty of both! Glad you enjoyed this 🙂
Hi Angela and Becca,
Your Emotion Thesaurus is a vital and much used reference for me, especially when I’m revising. Not only does it help with finding the right reaction or internal sensation for a particular emotion, it’s helpful in getting me to dig deeper into my character’s emotional state, sometimes leading me to a different, though related emotion than the one I’d started with.
Thanks for hosting them today, Kay. Hope you have a wonderful week!
Good morning, Dale! The Emotion Thesaurus has been a help to so many authors. I’m looking forward to diving into the Amplifier to glean its helpful info.
Oh, I’m so glad you’ve found it useful. It’s helped me, for sure!
I have the Emotion Thesaurus in print but I also have it in pdf–that way I can keep it up on my computer for when I’m looking for an action for my character. Looking forward to using this one, too!
Good morning, Patricia. Good idea to keep a PDF of the Emotion Thesaurus. So much helpful information there. I’m also looking forward to using this one.
Have a great week.
I love that every writer has their process and their preferred way of doing things. That’s why we try and make the books available in all the different formats :).
I love my Emotion Thesaurus. I’m off to add the Amplifiers!
Hi Sue. I’m right behind you in line to get the Amplifiers!
You’re a wonderful human being, Sue :).
Kay, a fascinating article with Angela and Becca. Thank you,
Terry
Hi Terry. Thanks for the kind words and for stopping by today.
Great interview. The Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus is going to be so useful!
Hi Priscilla! I agree with you. The new thesaurus is going to be a winner.
Can’t wait to see what you think of it, Priscilla.
This is the first I’ve heard of these books and they certainly sound interesting. Good addition to your blog, Kay, which is becoming quite a resource in itself for writers!
Hi Linore. The Emotion Thesaurus has an honored place on our book shelf of writing craft books. And the Emotion Amplifier is sure to be a great addition.
Kay’s always willing to share helpful resources and other writers’ good news. She’s a gem!
Hello Kay! What a lovely interview you brought to us on this Monday. Angela, and Becca, what a fantastic resource you’ve given us with your work. I have The Emotional Thesaurus and now there’s yet another level to go to. Thank you! I’ve long loved a quote from Benjamin Percy that compared using clichés with rolling our cart through a literary Walmart and pulling them off the shelf. Thank you for giving us somewhere much better to shop. God speed with all your work!
Hi Lisa! I love that quote from Benjamin Percy.
The Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus is definitely a step up to a different level for me.
Have a great week.
Writing fresh is harder and takes more time, but the payoff is always worthwhile. Our hope is that our resources make the process a bit easier.
Many thanks to Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi for being my interview guests this month. Also, thanks to everyone who stopped by and left a comment on the post, and a special thank you to Steve Hooley for supplying the beautiful propeller pen.
Six people were eligible to win, and I listed them in the order they commented:
1 Dale Ivan Smith
2 Sue Coletta
3 Terry Whalin
4 Priscilla Bettis
5 Linore Burkhard
6 Lisa Simonds
Then I ran a random integer generator to pick a number between 1 and 6. The number that came up was 2, so Sue Coletta is the winner of the propeller pen. Congratulations, Sue!
Congrats to Sue! 🙂