Thanks so much for attending this webinar on character emotions and how to write them effectively. I hope you gleaned some practical tips on showing instead of telling so you’ll be able to use those techniques to better engage readers.
Additional resources you might find helpful:
Further Reading and References
The Connection Between Character Emotion and Reader Empathy
How to Show Emotion for Non-Viewpoint Characters
Describing a Character’s Emotions: Problems and Solutions
Fight, Flight, or Freeze: What’s Your Character’s Go-To Response?
Emotional Scenes From Movies (PDF)
The Mother Lode of Posts on Showing (Not Telling) Emotion
If you’re looking for books on this topic, The Emotion Thesaurus (2nd Edition) may be just the ticket. In case you’re curious, we’ve provided the full of list of included entries and a sample for you to read. You might also want to look into its companion—Emotion Amplifiers. This booklet highlights 15 states you can apply to your character to heighten their emotional volatility and responses.
One Stop for Writers Resources
Emotional Progression Worksheet. Use this tool to map the progression of your character’s emotions throughout a given scene.
Checklists and Tip Sheets: If you like bite-sized learning, check out this collection. It contains tip sheets on many emotion-related topics, including Body Language, Body Language in Dialogue, Emotional Expressions, and a List of Emotions.
Emotion and Amplifiers Tutorials. You know how important it is to get the emotion piece right. These tutorials cut to the chase and tell you how to write character emotions effectively and utilize amplifiers to their best advantage.
The Character Builder leads you through the process of figuring out all the important elements of your character—backstory, personality, physical description, talents and skills, and emotional range. This information helps you understand who they are at the start of the story and how to write them consistently and authentically.
If you would like to try the Character Builder, sign up for One Stop for Writers’ free trial. This two-week trial gives you access to most of the site’s resources (including the descriptive thesaurus database), and you can create ‘one of’ something for each tool, including a character profile.
If you need more time than the 2-week free trial allows, use the code WOWEMOTIONWS to get 50% off your first month (choose the 1-month plan, cancel anytime).
Thanks for spending part of your day with me. If you need anything, just shoot me an email!
