Choosing a talent or skill that fits with your character’s personality, lifestyle, and values can go a long way to helping them break free of the common stereotypes seen so often in fiction. This thesaurus will help you find the perfect quality or two that will show readers your character’s uniqueness while also acting as an asset when it comes to goal achievement.
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.
Knowledge of Explosives
Description: Having knowledge of and experience with creating and detonating explosive devices
Beneficial Strengths or Abilities: knowledge of chemistry, steady hands, dexterity
Character Traits Suited for this Skill or Talent: cautious, patient, alert, calm, focused…
Required Resources and Training: Many amateurs in the field of explosives are self-taught, garnering information from the internet and from books on the subject. Others gain experience through an apprenticeship of sorts, learning about explosives…
Associated Stereotypes and Perceptions: terrorists, anarchists, paranoid types, SWAT team members…
Scenarios Where this Skill Might be Useful:
- when a building needs to be demolished
- when one needs to cut off access to an area (by destroying a street, establishing an immediate roadblock, etc.)
- when one wants to kill large numbers of people…
Related Talents and Skills: hot-wiring a car, mechanically minded, survival skills
TIP: Choose a talent or skill that makes your character memorable and helps them achieve their goals.
If this is something you’d like to learn more about, you might find these resources helpful. You can also see the full collection of talent and skill 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!
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.
Nobody seems to talk about how this is typical modus operandi for spy/espionage/millitary action thrillers. In a literary world of romance and feminine writers, this is refreshing to someone like me. I find little in my genre in a lot of writer magazines. It is disappointing and exasperating.
Hi Mark! If you are looking for good, solid information for espionage, you should check out this book (it’s co-written by a spook!) https://amzn.to/2PEApuq if you haven’t done so yet. Piper also has a blog and writes this type of fiction, so getting in touch with her might help you find more people who write this type of fiction and the resources that can better help with the challenges of this genre. 😉
It cracks me up that we writers can have so much fun with stuff like this. Thanks for the information. *boom*
Right? Seriously, we have THE BEST job!
I so want a whole book on this 🙂
Researching that would most likely result in my demise, so I can’t help you there 😉
I don’t know why, but I always think of a door being blasted, then the lock on a safe 🙂 Great stuff, as always!
I would not have the nerves for this!! Thankful other professionals do though!!