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WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®

WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®

Helping writers become bestselling authors

Talents and Skills Thesaurus Entry: Gardening

January 18, 2014 by BECCA PUGLISI

As writers, we want to make our characters as unique and interesting as possible. One way to do this is to give your character a special skill or talent that sets him apart from other people. This might be something small, like having a green thumb or being good with animals, to a larger and more competitive talent like stock car racing or being an award-winning film producer. 

When choosing a talent or skill, think about the personality of your character, his range of experiences and who his role models might have been. Some talents might be genetically imparted while others are created through exposure (such as a character talented at fixing watches from growing up in his father’s watch shop) or grow out of interest (archery, wakeboarding, or magic). Don’t be afraid to be creative and make sure the skill or talent is something that works with the scope of the story. 

GARDENING

gardening

Description: having a knack for cultivating and tending plants. Gardening can be a personal hobby or a professional career. It is…

Beneficial Strengths or Abilities: flexibility, dexterity, physical strength

Character Traits Suited for this Skill or Talent: patience, being environmentally conscious, creativity, meticulousness, organization, being observant

Associated Stereotypes and Perceptions: Gardening is typically associated with farmers and with elderly women in wide-brimmed hats puttering away in their backyards. But this hobby can be done just about anywhere these days; if you’re looking to modernize the experience, there are many advances in gardening that you can tap into: hydroponics…

Scenarios Where this Skill Might be Useful:

  • An apocalyptic scenario where food is scarce
  • An emergency where one’s knowledge of medicinal plants could mean the difference between life and death
  • When a stress outlet is needed for a character… 

Talents and skills not only make our characters stand out, they often help them attain their goals. So choosing them strategically can greatly enhance both the character and the story.

If this is something you’d like to learn more about, you can find the entries in their entirety at One Stop For Writers, where all our thesauruses are cross-referenced and linked for easy navigation. If you’re interested in seeing a free sampling of the Talent and Skill Thesaurus and our other descriptive collections, head on over and register at One Stop!

Image: Goiwara @ Pixabay

BECCA PUGLISI
BECCA PUGLISI

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Divyanaveen says

    June 22, 2020 at 12:31 pm

    I want to showcase gardening has a talent in talent round and iam planning to do has a dish garden.

  2. Susan J Berger says

    January 21, 2014 at 8:41 pm

    Actually rented a house once where every plant looked like it belonged in a witch’s garden.

    • ANGELA ACKERMAN says

      January 21, 2014 at 9:16 pm

      Oh my gosh, I LOVE that description!

    • BECCA PUGLISI says

      January 23, 2014 at 6:40 pm

      That sounds kind of awesome, lol. Well, as long as ~I~ don’t have to live there 😉

  3. ice says

    January 21, 2014 at 3:10 am

    Thank you for sharing. I like gardening. It helps reduce stress

  4. Rosi says

    January 18, 2014 at 5:29 pm

    This is a really neat skill to flesh out a character. I would have to use a lot of imagination, though, since I have a very black thumb. 8-{

    • ANGELA ACKERMAN says

      January 20, 2014 at 11:41 am

      Haha, i do too, but thankfully there’s google!

    • Jennifer Jensen says

      March 16, 2015 at 1:17 pm

      You could always give your character a desire to garden but also a black thumb – comic relief or showing her perseverance, etc.

      • BECCA PUGLISI says

        March 16, 2015 at 2:33 pm

        This is a great way to use a hobby to create conflict. I could use my own gardening attempts for research…

  5. tracikenworth says

    January 18, 2014 at 5:26 pm

    I like this. I gave one of my main characters a cooking hobby. His family’s really BIG in their village for being the chefs others go to during celebrations. I just love that he does something so simple, yet complicated. It makes them more alive to give them traits like this.

    • ANGELA ACKERMAN says

      January 20, 2014 at 11:42 am

      This is an area of character development that sometimes we can skimp on, but figuring out a talent or skill that’s unique and meaningful to the character’s world and their journey is one of the easiest ways to make them feel real and compelling, isn’t it?

  6. Lisa Buie-Collard says

    January 18, 2014 at 9:33 am

    Brilliant post! Thanks for sharing… BTW, I love to garden…

    • BECCA PUGLISI says

      January 18, 2014 at 11:20 am

      I like the idea of gardening, lol. But whenever I try, it doesn’t turn out well. What I’m finding interesting about these skills and talents entries is the vast variety there are of each. I mean, I think ‘gardening’, and I imagine flowers or vegetables in a backyard. But modern gardening has expanded to include so many cool innovations so gardening can take place in unorthodox places with unusual methods. There are so many ways we can include various skills or talents and they don’t have to look the way we would anticipate them to look.

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