Books You Wish You’d Written

I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Elizabeth Gilbert’s BIG MAGIC, a captivating and useful book. It's read by EG, so listening to the audiobook is almost like having a one to one workshop with her, and it's illustrative to hear the book in her voice as well. 

One thing she talks about is how ideas are “out there” in the ether, in the recesses of the mass consciousness.  And, that if you have a creative idea, and you don’t get on with it, the Idea offers itself up to someone else.  Gilbert has a wonderful true story she relates about how that happened to her. She waited and lost her idea.  So if you have an idea and you’re procrastinating on it, her advice is: get on with it.

I didn’t have the idea for this series of books, but I wish I had.  

Written by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi, so far the series includes:

• The Negative Trait Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Flaws
• The Positive Trait Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Attributes 
• The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide To Character Expression 
• The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Psychological Trauma. 
• The Urban Setting Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to City Spaces 
• The Rural Setting Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Personal and Natural Place 

Any of them would be a practical tool to have at hand for those times when you get stuck visualizing or creating characters, and invaluable for those of us whose characters all tend to be too Nice, especially when your plot calls for some stinkers. 

For example, in The Negative Trait Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Flaws, you discover “a vast collection of flaws to explore when building a character’s personality.  Each entry includes possible causes, attitudes, behaviors, thoughts, and related emotions.” 

And there’s its companion volume, The Positive Trait Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Attributes: “Real character examples from literature, film, or television to show how an attribute drives actions and decisions, influences goals, and steers relationships.”

Each admirable trait has information under these headings:

1.  Definition of the trait;

2.  Similar Flaws; 

3.  Possible Causes; 

4.  Associated Behaviours and Attitudes; 

5.  Associated Thoughts; 

6.  Positive Aspects; 

7.  Negative Aspects; 

8.  Overcoming This Trait as a Major Flaw; 

9.  Traits in Supporting Characters That May Cause Conflict; and my favourite shortcut section:

10.  Examples from Film, sometimes Examples from Literature.
(In Positive Traits, for "Spoiled," it was Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory; Scarlett O’Hara from Gone With the Wind; Dudley Dursley from the Harry Potter series; and Eric Bates from The Toy.
This is my favourite section because I can pretend I'm doing research and go watch the films "for reference." La!).
They do that for each trait – in Negative Traits, from Abrasive right through the alphabet to Worrywart.  I leave you to go and see what they did with Nagging. 

QUIZ:  See if you can figure out which characters in literature or movies  the authors chose for these three negative traits (115 traits are dissected in the book). I'll put the answers in the Comments below. 

• Gossipy
• Forgetful
• Self-destructive

No peeking before you've brainstormed a little, because recalling characters representing these three negative traits before you look, will be good neuroexercise!
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©2017Margo Lamont