The Emotion Thesaurus helps writers with one of their biggest battles: getting a character’s emotions onto the page.
Part brainstorming tool, part writing guide, this resource helps you create characters who think, feel, and behave like real people–ones readers will deeply connect to. Whether drafting or revising, this thesaurus’ descriptive lists of behavior, dialogue cues, thoughts, and universal internal sensations provide constant inspiration so you can bring readers in close to what a character is feeling.
What This Guide Helps Writers Do:
Write Emotion That Feels Natural, Not Rehearsed
If your character smiles, sighs, and frowns too often, this book shows you how to think past repetitive details to find stronger descriptive choices that immerse readers in the moment.
Show Emotion Using the Whole Body and Mind
Emotion isn’t only expressed through facial expressions or gestures. This guide breaks down 130 emotions into physical signals, internal sensations, thoughts, dialogue cues, and impulses, giving you a playground of ideas for writing realistic, fresh character responses.
Maintain Emotional Consistency
Inconsistent reactions can pull readers out of a story. This guide teaches writers how to find their character’s emotional range and tendencies so their actions, choices, and behaviors will always line up with who they are and match the intensity of what they feel.
Show Hidden Emotion and Subtext
Characters often repress what they feel due to emotional discomfort and fears of being judged. No matter what they hide, though, readers must know what they feel. This guide teaches you how to show what lurks beneath the surface even when a character is determined to keep the truth buried.
What’s Inside The Emotion Thesaurus?
In addition to being a masterclass on using emotion to power your story, each entry contains descriptive ideas for:
- Physical signals that reveal the emotion through posture, movement, behavior, and expression
- Internal sensations due to instinctive bodily responses that accompany an emotion
- Mental responses such as thoughts, urges, impulses, and fixations
- Speech and non-verbal cues that can filter into dialogue exchanges
- Longer-term cues that show how an emotion lingers, escalates, or dissipates
- Writer tips to help avoid clichés and overuse
Say goodbye to writer’s block and staring at the screen. Instead, brainstorm your way to meaningful moments, powerful scenes, and character struggles and insecurities that readers will empathize with and relate to.
At its core, The Emotion Thesaurus teaches writers how to show emotion through human behavior rather than explanation. By focusing on what characters do, think, and feel internally, writers can communicate an emotion without naming it outright—allowing readers to experience the story instead of being told what to feel.
Format and Availability
The Emotion Thesaurus is available in print, ebook, and PDF, making it easy to have nearby, whether you’re writing at your desk or revising on the go. If you are a collector interested in the original first edition of The Emotion Thesaurus, you can find that here.
