Hi Ashley,

I appreciate due diligence. I believe every person should take care with whom they take advice from, and how they spend money (if that person is looking to invest in paid knowledge). But if, to you, recognizing someone as a thought leader in the space of strong story craft comes down to “Did they publish fiction or not” then I’ll save you loads of time and tell you neither Becca or I have any published fiction available. The reason is quite simple – in pursuit of being fiction authors we discovered we were great teachers, and this part of our lives took over. It’s been a rewarding career to help as many people as we have.

I’m sorry you were unable to find enough testimonials from ‘writers you’ve heard of’ or that the ones on this very page did not suffice. I’m not sure what it is that you are looking for exactly as the tens of thousands of book reviews readily available on Amazon, Goodreads, Bookbub or any other book provider/reader platform literally share the opinions and endorsements you seem to be searching for. If you’re expecting a list of authors we’ve helped, editors and agents who recommend us, or the list of MFA papers we’ve been sourced in, I won’t be providing one, but Google will help you find information on us, our books, and any other criteria that you need. If you have a specific interest in the Emotional Wound Thesaurus, Amazon has a handy look inside feature, and of course thousands of reviews to check out.

Wishing you all the best,
Angela

Hi, David. I’m so glad you were able to pick up a copy of The Emotion Thesaurus. I hope it comes in handy for you :). Unfortunately, Angela and I just don’t have time to do reviews. We love to help others, but we can’t do everything that comes our way, and this is one of those areas where we’ve just had to draw a firm line. Best of luck to you, though!

I would be fascinated to read your book Howard, as I survived one near death experience, just one. How on earth did you manage 29?

Hi, Lily! The Emotion Thesaurus began out of a need Angela and I saw in our own writing. Our characters were always smiling, frowning, clenching their fists, shuffling their feet, etc. to show certain emotions. We wanted to figure out how to show emotion in different ways but didn’t know how. So we started making our own lists of emotions and what happened in the body when that feeling hit. We paid attention to our own emotions and what was happening when we felt them. We watched movies and made notes about what actors were doing when they wanted to portray a certain feeling. And we noted how other authors were expressing emotions in their writing.

This is how we created the content. The entries in the Emotion Thesaurus are by no means comprehensive; we encourage authors to use the same techniques to make their own notes and add to the lists. We also encourage them to not use our suggestions verbatim, since each character is different and will express emotions differently; it’s important to personalize these cues to your character. In this way, hopefully you can use this resource to come up with ways to show your character’s emotions in fresh and individualized ways that will ring true with readers.

Thank you in advance.

Hi, Howard! Congrats on your recent publication. Writers Helping Writers isn’t a group; rather, it’s a blog that provides writing tips and advice via posts. To receive notifications of new posts (so you don’t have to keep checking in), you can sign up using the box in the left-hand sidebar of the home page. We also have published a number of books to help writers with various aspects of writing; you can see what those are all about on our Bookstore page (https://writershelpingwriters.net/bookstore/). While we do offer practical help via these tools, we aren’t able to help with reviews and visibility, unfortunately. But hopefully you can get lost of help on the craft of writing here. Best of luck to you! We’re so glad you found us.

William, thank you for taking the time to write in and tell us how this book is helping you–I am so glad to hear that it is providing the right amount of brainstorming when you need it!