In the immortal words of Samantha Sang and the Bee Gees, “It’s just emotion that’s taking me over, caught up in sorrow, lost in the song.” Unfortunately novels lack accompanying singers who let the reader know how characters feel.
One of the most difficult aspects of writing is portraying emotion. Sometimes that is fine – a little ambiguity can be good for a story – but other times writers rely on tropes or telling instead of showing to illustrate a character’s inner world. Unlearning these bad habits can be difficult. Luckily, some great resources exist to help writers learn how to represent feelings on the page. The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi is one of those resources.
The Emotion Thesaurus acts as a guide for portraying emotions. It begins with a brief explanation of the do’s and don’ts of writing emotion including descriptions of common clichés, the…
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