Book Talk…6/1/18

Traci Kenworth

Writing Vivid Emotions by Rayne Hall. Createspace. Feb. 7, 2017.

Amazon blurb: Do you want your characters to feel such strong emotions that the readers’ scalps prickle, their mouths go dry and their hearts thud like they’re sharing the experience? Do you want to convey fear or happiness in ways that make the readers feel heat radiating through their chest or cold sweat trickling down their spine rather than the tired ‘he was afraid’ or ‘she felt happy’? Step by step, you’ll learn how to express feelings through body language, dialogue, thought, similes, visceral sensations and mood-rich descriptions. The book also guides you through layering emotions and varying their intensity. It shows you how to subtly reveal a character’s secret or suppressed emotions. The book also flags mistakes to avoid and reveals tricks used by professional authors. At the end of each chapter, you’ll find assignments. If you like, you can use this book as an advanced fiction-writing course. Please note: This book is not suitable for absolute beginners. It assumes that you have mastered the basics of your craft and know how to create characters and write dialogue and are ready to to take your craft skills to the next level. British English.

My review: Like similar books regarding emotions and characters, this book shows you how to get the descriptions in. I like that it showed examples from the author’s own works. It is set up very fact-of-matter so you can page through what you need when you need it. I like this author’s teaching style and will be looking into more of her books.