I’m always looking for reference material when I’m writing. More often than not, I feel as I keep repeating the same word or phrase multiple times and I’m not quite sure how to convey emotion. The struggle is most definitely real. I recently stumbled upon The Emotional Wound: Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Psychological Trauma By: Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglish.

This book is a handy tool for writing a wide variety of scenes. Some categories included: crime and victimization, disabilities and disfigurement, failures and mistakes, injustice and hardship, misplace trust and betrayals, and others. Each category has several subcategories under it. For example for the category Failures and Mistakes, it includes: accidentally killing someone, cracking under pressure, failing at school, and failing to save someone’s life. In the subcategories, it provides examples of how an individual might react in that situation. It also includes: basic needs often compromised by this wound, false beliefs that could be embraced, character’s fears, possible responses and results, personality traits, and triggers.

This book has so much information. Writing an emotional scene can be extremely tough, but this book practically holds your hand as you do it and it gives you additional steps to take. This is not a book that is one and done. This book can be used several times, with several different projects. Like mentioned, earlier there is so much great information in this book.

Final Analysis

The Emotional Wound: Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Psychological Trauma is a great reference for anyone who is writing a book.