I have been working on my own personal writing recently. Even though I’m a copyeditor, I’m always seeking ways to strengthen my own writing, particularly in the overarching story and character areas, where I don’t get that same amount of practice from editing other people’s manuscripts. A clean draft is nice, but an impactful one is even better. My particular goal at the moment is to make my stories more emotionally resonant.
To that end, I bought a new book that I’ve found to be immensely helpful. If you want to make your stories more emotionally resonant, your characters more real, then I highly recommend The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Psychological Trauma* by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi.
I’d heard about Ackerman and Puglisi’s Writers Helping Writers* series before, but I hadn’t kept up with them until recently, and I didn’t know there were so many of them now. The Emotional Wound Thesaurus in particular has helped me dig far down into my characters’ psyches and realise some very important changes and additions I need to make to several of my in-progress manuscripts to make them hit the reader harder in the ‘feels’.
Knowing what has hurt a character, what drives them, and how to trigger those shadows of the past through the events and themes of the story to bring everything together into a healing experience for the character and a cathartic one for the reader will make your story stand out amongst others in which the character does things because the plot needs them to.
The Emotional Wound Thesaurus doesn’t just list emotional wounds: it shows you how to thread those wounds together, express them realistically, and weave a tight, impactful story.
10/10, would recommend
Open for editing
I’m on the lookout for new self-published clients, particularly those who write fantasy, sci fi, or romance. If you’re looking for a copyeditor to tidy your manuscript before publication, please see my Fiction editing page.
*affiliate links
