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 emotions and setting them up for overreactions, misjudgments, mistakes, and increased conflict.
The information we’ve learned about amplifiers could fill a book, so that’s what we did—published an actual, real-live book that’s chock full of this content and is available for purchase. The Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus is the only resource in existence that covers this topic, so that’s the best place to go for more information.
But if you’re curious about a certain aspect of amplifiers or you’d rather get your info in bite-sized pieces, you might find the following links helpful.
Posts, Podcasts, and PDFs
What is an Emotion Amplifier?
The Connection between Amplifiers and Emotional Stress
Why You Want Your Character to Lose Control (and How Amplifiers Get Them There)
Using Amplifiers to Motivate a Stubborn Character
Build Reader Empathy by Using Amplifiers to Create Common Ground
Does Your Scene Need More Tension? Add an Amplifier!
How Amplifiers Can Create Much-Needed Inner Conflict
Use an Amplifier to Help Your Character Resolve Their Inner Conflict
Build These Seven Growth Milestones into Your Character’s Arc
Use Amplifiers to Motivate Emotionally Challenging Characters
Why Amplifiers Should be Your Antagonist’s Go-To Weapon
10 Ways Amplifiers Benefit Your Story
We’ve also added the appendix tools from this book to our Tools page for your own personal use:
- Using Emotion Amplifiers to Destabilize a Character. A brainstorming list of ideas on how emotional volatility can alter your character’s responses and put them on a crash course with regret
- Emotional Reasoning: Weigh-And-Measure Questions. Questions your character may ask themselves (or avoid asking) when they’re struggling with cognitive dissonance
- Decision-Making Crossroads Tool. Use this to explore the biases, personal beliefs, emotional considerations, and other factors that will drive your character’s decision making process when they’re facing a challenge
Other Mother Lode Posts
If you found this collection of resources helpful, you might be interested in some of our other compilation posts.
How to Write about Character Occupations
How to Show (Not Tell) Character Emotions
How to Create Phenomenal First Pages
How to Write Conflict that Has Maximum Impact
How to Write about Your Character’s Pain
How to Write about a Character’s Emotional Wounds
How to Use Talents & Skills to Further Your Story & Individualize Characters
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.