Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi are bestselling authors, writing coaches, and international speakers. Their books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. Angela and Becca also co-founded their popular Writers Helping Writers site, a hub where authors can hone their craft, as well as One Stop for Writers, an innovative online library built to help writers elevate their storytelling.
--This text refers to the paperback edition.
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Let's face it, our characters have to have negative traits if they're going to be realistic. This book will help you achieve that in a realistic manner. Full of great hints and tips, you'll want this as part of your writing collection.
35 Pages At The start describes how these traits and feelings play out in scenes of conflict between different kinds of characters. I was only expecting a thesaurus, but the intro was worth a whole book. The positive/negative impact, redemption paths and film/tv/novel example characters, great. (If all you want is one word list - thesaurus, I recommend one look online thesaurus)
Great resource for developing your characters. Logically set out and easy to find what you're looking for. If I have one criticism, it's that I now have too many ideas.
This is the second in a trio of books which are, I feel, an essential part of any publishers toolkit. Like the Positive Trait Thesaurus the first few chapters cover the negative traits which will help the writer to develop a realistic character. It discusses how, characters, no matter how good or evil they are, need to display opposite traits which make the seem believable. There is an overview of the types of characters which are so deplorable that no one can identify with them and how these can be changed by the way ins which they are portrayed.
Following helpful and useful introductory chapters, the book becomes even more useful when the Thesaurus is used. This is more than your average Thesaurus, providing an in depth exploration of a word and its use in writing fiction. It provides a definition of the word, similar flaws, possible causes, associated behaviours and attitudes, associated thoughts, associated emotions, positive aspects, negative aspects, examples from film, overcoming this trait as a major flaw, and traits in supporting characters that cause conflict.
As a tool for writers this book cannot be faulted, and is in fact outstanding. This is a not to be missed book for all writers, whether new or established. Buy it now you will not regret it.
This is a really short book that has very few negative traits in it. Useful if you really can't think of any negative traits, but there are only a few and it's all back to front with most of it telling your granny how to suck eggs and very little useful information unfortunately.
The table of contents is at the back again and I went straight there this time and there were only maybe 3 or 4 pages of negative traits at the back and a load of padding over the first three quarters.
It's good to have it in one place, but there are more negative emotions than are in this book. The positive traits book had several pages of emotion compared to the handful in this one.
Useful at a stretch, but could be a lot better and more useful to writers if there was more negative trait names and less fluff at the start... would be good if the table of contents was in the right place too!
The information provided before the actual traits is good, this is up to around page 38 on the kindle. The listed traits I think will be useful as a starting point because, as the authors themselves pointed out, there are many more traits than those listed, so you won't find every possible negative trait listed here.
From how I see each negative trait listed, it looks like enough to get enough understanding of what you need to consider overall for a negative trait, even if you happen to choose a negative trait that is not listed here.
5.0 out of 5 starsA great guide that helps you steer away from using the ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 August 2014
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A great guide that helps you steer away from using the same tired old phrases over and over again. It lists all the negative traits with an explanation of internal and external reactions, the types of people that may exhibit these reactions, the downfalls of these traits and gives examples of films in which those types of characters have been portrayed successfully.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 February 2014
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Highly recommend this book. Insightful. Gives you gritty options to create realistic characters. Like the other two in the series, the opening chapters delve into the numerous negative aspects of human nature and potential causes. Great food for thought giving the writer interesting choices. It is well worth reading the website, Writers helping Writers, the book muse. A great aid for all writers. Can't thank the Authors enough.