Happy Friday Everyone! I hope your week went well and you have some fun things planned for this weekend. Christmas is creeping up on us. It’s funny that this happens when we it’s the same date every year, but it does somehow. For Friday Tools I want to share with you a new book that my husband bought me for Christmas. But wait it’s not Christmas yet so how do I know what he got me? The delivery person left it outside in the rain. By the time I discovered the box I tried to pick the box up but the box fell to pieces and there was my book completely soaked. After I told my husband about the book tragedy, and confessed that I now know the secret about my gift, he ordered another copy. That’s fair right? I didn’t mean to peek. The box fell apart. The book I’m talking about is The Negative Trait Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi.
This book is set up much like their other fantastic books that I own such as The Emotion Thesaurus . The table of contents is a list of the negative traits, you choose which one you want to look at and then go to that page. Each negative trait gets two pages of information. The sections are- Definition, Similar Flaws, Possible Causes, Associated Behaviors and Attitudes, Associated Thoughts, Associated Emotions, Positive Aspects, Negative Aspects, Example from Film, Overcoming this Traits Major Flaw, and last but not least, Traits in Supporting Characters That May Cause Conflict. Wow that’s a lot of information and a lot to take in! So how does this work? I’ll pick a negative trait and give a small example from the book by just choosing one line from each section to give you an idea. Each section has a lot more than the one line examples I’m giving below.
Negative Trait example from the book The Negative Traits Thesaurus
Negative Trait- Cynicial
Definition-Having a disdainful mistrust of others and their motives
Similar Flaws- Jaded
Possible Causes -a past betrayal
Associated Behaviors and Attitudes-Distrusting others
Associated Thoughts- Why do they bother trying? Nothing’s going to change.
Associated Emotions-anxiety
Positive Aspects- Because cynical characters are naturally suspicious, they’re not gullible and therefore hard to dupe.
Negative Aspects-Cynicism, as a form of jaded or even scornful or negativity, wears on others and brings them down.
Example from Film- Han Solo (Star Wars)- Life taught him that people are fickle and governments are are tyrannical, and the only person he can count on is himself. Other examples listed in the book are Rick Blaine (Casablanca), Benjamin (Animal Farm) and Etienne Navarre (Lady Hawk)
Overcoming this Traits Major Flaw- Cynicism is a difficult cycle to break. There is hope for the cynical character if he can find someone to trust.
Traits in Supporting Characters That May Cause Conflict- evasive, gullible
I’m so glad my husband purchased this book for me! I particularly like the part where you take a negative trait and give it a positive aspect. I highly recommend this book to anyone working on breathing life into a character that feels three dimensional using flaws as a tool. Heck this can also be useful in trying to understand friends and family. This book can be found on Amazon. Five stars don’t lie.
I hoe you all have a great weekend and enjoyed this post.
Until Next Time! Write Well and Prosper!
