Crafting likable, interesting characters is a balancing act, and finding that perfect mix of strengths and weaknesses can be difficult. But the task has become easier thanks to The Negative Trait Thesaurus.
Through its flaw-centric exploration of character arc, motivation, emotional wounds, and basic needs, writers will learn which flaws make the most sense for their heroes, villains, and other members of the story’s cast.
Inside The Negative Trait Thesaurus you’ll find:
- A vast collection of flaws to explore when building a character’s personality. Each entry includes possible causes, attitudes, behaviors, thoughts, and related emotions
- Real examples from literature, film, or television to show how each flaw can create life challenges and relational friction
- Advice on building layered and memorable characters from the ground up
- An in-depth look at backstory, emotional wounds, and how pain warps a character’s view of himself and his world, influencing behavior and decision making
- A flaw-centric exploration of character arc, relationships, motivation, and basic needs
- Tips on how to best show a character’s flaws to readers while avoiding common pitfalls
- Downloadable tools to aid writers in character creation
Written in list format and fully indexed, this brainstorming resource is perfect for creating deep, flawed characters that readers will relate to. The Negative Trait Thesaurus sheds light on your character’s dark side.
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See the master list of entries
Are you going to turn WEATHER AND EARTHLY PHENOMENON THESAURUS into a book?
Hi Lucy,
We never will say never, but right now it isn’t on our radar. Instead we moved it to One Stop for Writers where it is a permanent part of our descriptive Thesaurus database: https://onestopforwriters.com/weathers
Is there a place to buy all books combined in a PDF format? I really want them all!
If you are asking if they all exist in a single PDF, then no, we don’t have that, but each book comes in PDF format and is affordably priced (rather than the usual high price you see with big traditional publishers). Your other option is to invest in a subscription to One Stop for Writers and access all 13 thesauruses we have created. A list and links to those are here: https://onestopforwriters.com/features_tools
Hope this helps! Happy writing, Mike, and thanks for being so enthusiastic about our books!
WOW! I just went to check out the price of the subscription and I didn’t expect it to be so affordable! Thank you for creating this amazing resource!
So glad it is helpful to you, Nadia. 🙂 Happy writing!
Awesome tool! It plus the emotions thesaurus, emotion amplifiers, and positive traits thesaurus are like the basic tools when I’m writing. Thank you!
Small tip for future installments: use neutral pronouns and/or mix masculine and feminine pronouns when talking about characters. Not all chargers identify as make!
So glad you found this book helpful, Andrena. I’m a bit confused about your comment about not mixing male and female pronouns however. In our front matter, we do exactly this–listing some examples from a male’s viewpoint, other examples from a female’s.
However what we do not do is switch back and forth in the same passage or example, as this would likely greatly confuse readers. In any case, Becca and I will keep an eye on this to always ensure both genders are represented.