Writers Helping Writers^®

Emotion

Three Emotion Problems to Avoid in Your Story Opening

July 2, 2024

Three Emotion Problems to Avoid in Your Story Opening

July 2, 2024

As I’m sure you’ve heard roughly a gajillion times, your story’s first pages are very important. Editors and agents typically request just a portion of your story’s opening, and potential…

A Mother Lode of Resources on Emotion Amplifiers

June 27, 2024

A Mother Lode of Resources on Emotion Amplifiers

June 27, 2024

Angela and I have been busy bees the past few months, creating as much content as we could surrounding emotion amplifiers—a little-known storytelling element that’s great for elevating a character’s…

How to Avoid Clichéd Emotional Reactions

June 4, 2024

How to Avoid Clichéd Emotional Reactions

June 4, 2024

The single tear trickling down the cheek. A kiss that leaves one’s knees weak. The grin that stretches from ear to ear. Yawn Oh, excuse me. I almost fell asleep…

Release Day: The Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus Is Here (& a Giveaway!)

May 13, 2024

Release Day: The Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus Is Here (& a Giveaway!)

May 13, 2024

Another book joins the family today: The Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Stress and Volatility! Writing authentic emotional reactions can be difficult when a character is the…

10 Reasons Why Emotion Amplifiers Are Good for Your Story

May 9, 2024

10 Reasons Why Emotion Amplifiers Are Good for Your Story

May 9, 2024

As you may have heard, we recently released The Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Stress and Volatility, a companion to The Emotion Thesaurus. If you aren’t familiar…

Three Essentials for Engaging Reader Emotion in the Setup

April 30, 2024

Three Essentials for Engaging Reader Emotion in the Setup

April 30, 2024

As authors, we all know the importance of engaging our audience within a book’s first few pages. Grabbing the reader: captivating them in a way that makes them want to…

Does Your Scene Need More Tension? Add an Emotion Amplifier!

April 25, 2024

Does Your Scene Need More Tension? Add an Emotion Amplifier!

April 25, 2024

Emotion and tension often go hand in hand. If character emotion is low, story tension is also probably waning. On the flip side, tension is likely on the rise when…

Three Easy Steps to Generate a Goal Using Fear as Motivation

April 16, 2024

Three Easy Steps to Generate a Goal Using Fear as Motivation

April 16, 2024

There’s so much emphasis on making sure that we give our character a goal that’s clear starting from their very first scene. Win the game. Find someone to marry. Land…

Why Writers Should Use Psychology In Their Storytelling

April 2, 2024

Why Writers Should Use Psychology In Their Storytelling

April 2, 2024

A writer’s job is to do one thing well: pull the reader in. Our words should act like a tractor beam, sucking them into our story’s world. We tap into…

Write Like a Magician: Creating the Illusion of an Unseen Character

March 26, 2024

Write Like a Magician: Creating the Illusion of an Unseen Character

March 26, 2024

Whenever we write a protagonist who lost someone important within their backstory, we have some heavy lifting ahead of us. That “unseen” character—a character who has died or who is…