On The Train: With Angela Ackerman

Posted on by Benjamin Thomas

 

On The Train

with Angela Ackerman

 

 

We have a very special post today, with bestselling co-author of mutiple blockbuster thesauri Angela Ackerman.

 

WELCOME ANGELA 

We’re so pleased to have you with us today!

 

 

Author Angela Ackerman_Writers Helping Writers

 

Angela Ackerman is a writing coach, international speaker, and co-author of the bestselling book, The Emotion Thesaurus: a Writer’s Guide to Character Expression, as well as four others including the newly minted Urban Setting and Rural Setting Thesaurus duo. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. Angela is also the co-founder of the popular site, Writers Helping Writers, as well as One Stop for Writers, an innovative online library built to help writers elevate their storytelling.

You can also connect with her on Twitter: @AngelaAckerman

 

I’m so glad to have at least one half of the dynamic duo of Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. These two are a completely awesome pair and deserve a splendid title. Therefore, by the power vested in me, I deem thee Champions of Inspiration and Thesauri Queens! WAHOO! HIP HIP HOORAY!

And if you haven’t heard already, Becca & Angela are the masterminds behind the game-changing Positive and Negative Trait Thesauruses, as well as the Emotional Thesaurus.

 

 

little sketchy man with tie and glasses on winner's pedestal

 

 

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CONGRATULATIONS

 

 

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another. ~J.M. Barrie 

 

 

 

Hi Angela,
You and Becca have two wonderful setting books coming out soon, June 13th I believe. Can’t wait to read them. YUM. So let’s talk settings shall we?
Please don’t stone me, but I’ve never been to Canada. Hopefully sometime soon though. Especially since I keep meeting great people from Canada. (and I drink Tim Horton’s coffee)
*You live close to Calgary, Alberta; what’s it like living there? I bet it’s UBER GORGEOUS. Do you have any pictures of the Canadian Rockies to woo us with?

I won’t lie—it’s very beautiful. I am close to the mountains, and a well-known place called Banff, which is one of the most sought out natural areas in the world. Becca recently came up (from New York) as we were teaching a workshop together, and the first thing we did when her feet hit the ground was drive 45 minutes to Banff.

That sounds pretty inticing. I’ll have to follow suit. 

 

 

banff 2

 

This is absolutely breathtaking.

 

Banff1

 

Looks like the mountains are right in your backyard practically!

 

See below for a list of their publications.

The Positive Trait Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Attributes

The Negative Trait Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Flaws

The Emotion Thesaurus : A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression

Emotion Amplifiers Kindle edition

The Rural Setting Thesaurus:  A Writer’s Guide to Personal and Natural places. Add this publication to your Goodreads  account.

The Urban Setting Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to City Spaces. Add this publication to your Goodreads

 

 

*Tell us about your new setting books and how they can enrich our writing.
This pair of books I think will surprise people, because so many writers really don’t peel back the curtain on setting and all it can do. Most think of setting as a stage, a place that is necessary for a scene’s action to unfold, the anchor for readers. They sprinkle in a few sensory details to help the reader picture it and then focus the storytelling lens on the action. But setting is story glue. It lends powers to all other elements: helps to characterize the story’s cast, adds dimension to plot and character growth through challenges and conflict, evokes mood, steers emotion through emotional triggers and symbolism, and even allows writers a way to deliver critical backstory in a non-dumpy way. Honestly, choosing the right setting for each scene is akin to creating magic, so learning how to use setting to its fullest may be one of the smartest things a writer can do to improve their storytelling.

But I guess that might not fully answer your question. Bare bones, these books show writers how to use the setting to elevate a story as mentioned above, plus list the sights, smells, sounds, tastes, and textures for 225 setting a characters might visit, spark ideas on how to generate natural conflict in the setting, and give descriptive examples of each one using different techniques. Most of the book is set up in list format, and each setting location has two pages of sensory detail and information. This allows writers to find the description they need that fits perfectly with their story and then quickly get right back to writing.

You guys are the best in the business, honestly, at what you do. We give honor to whom honor is due. I have all your books, yet there’s unplumbed depths waiting to be discovered.

Hone your skills with the Urban Setting Thesaurus.

 

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Unearth the secret of mastering the Rural Setting detail.

 

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I have to say, I’m licking my chops here waiting for these books to come out. In order to write or utilize setting to its fullest potential we need a KEEN NOSE. For detail, discerment and skill. The skill is in the balancing affect. Knowing when, how, and how much of the setting to enrich our  stories with.

 

 

Liar

 

*Can you tell us about the adventures you and Becca experienced in researching settings? I’M SURE YOU HAD MANY ADVENTURES LOL!
Yes we did. Becca has taken quite a few road trips to check out marinas, lighthouses, schools, and racetracks. I hung around some seedier areas to get sensory detail on alleys and underpasses, toured a jail cell, watched half a dozen videos on (ugh) taxidermy, and was arrested so I could get the sensory experience of being handcuffed in the back of a police car. Thankfully it wasn’t a real arrest because my family set the whole thing up, but it FELT pretty real, let me tell you!

I like how you casually weaved in getting arrested. I bet that was quite a sensory experience. Adventurous indeed!
*Where physically did you have to go in order to obtain the necessary sensory feedback?
Most of the locations we have in our books we physically visited. Some we couldn’t. It’s hard to get into a psychiatric ward, for example—they aren’t big on letting you tour a place like that. Or a funeral home, or a slaughterhouse. In these cases we watched a lot of you tube videos, did a lot of googling, and often talked to people who worked in these settings. But other places—a cruise ship, casino, a fire hall, ancient ruins, pastures, rainforests, orchards, salvage yards—these we visited. At the fire hall I got to try on all the firefighter gear, and man, talk about heavy!

Cool. You should’ve taken a picture! Sounds like it was a pretty thorough job. My dad was actually a fireman his whole career. 
*Where emotionally did you have to go to tune in to the settings?
Good question. It often depended on the setting, and what sort of emotions were naturally evoked. Sometimes we had to distance ourselves. To get detail on slaughterhouses and pastures, we watched a lot of videos that were disturbing and graphic—animal slaughter processes, factory farming, animal cruelty, things like that. We had to try and focus as much as possible on the details, not what was happening, to get these entries right.

Wow. That’s sounds very challenging. Hard to imagine having to sit through that. Well thanks for taking one for the team. It just goes to show how much work physically and emotionally are invested in these kinds of things. THANK YOU.
*Did you encounter any difficulties on your adventure?
Not that I can think of. Mostly it was fun, albeit time consuming—these two books took several years to create. But I am a big traveller and been to different countries, which really helped me get access to some of the different types of natural environments that are climate-specific (rainforests, deserts, places like that). And the fact that Becca and I live in different places helped us access different types of locations. It worked out well.

That’s great! Although personally, I would skip the rainforests and deserts. But seriously, this shows the caliber of writers you are, and I commend you for it. 
Thanks so much for asking these great questions!

Angela

 

Thanks for joining! Feel free to come back anytime.

 

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: Must see interview with Becca Puglisi and Lorna Faith.

 

 

 

1. How Writers Can Bring Setting to Life through Personification  A guest post by Becca Puglisi over at C.S. Lakin’s site livewritethrive.com.

2. Something Big is Coming by Angela Ackerman.

3. Level up your Setting by Thinking Outside the Box by Angela Ackerman.

4. Showing Through your Characters Senses a guest post by C.S. Lakin.

5. Learn How NOT to Waste Your Story Setting’s Full Potential by K.M. Weiland

 

 

 

KEEP WRITING 

YOUR STORY 

YOU’LL NEVER 

REGRET IT 

Benjamin Thomas 

@thewritingtrain

http://www.thewritingtrain.com 

Pathology of the Writer: Constipation

Posted on by Benjamin Thomas

Balance concept

THE CONSTIPATED WRITER

 

Writer’s attempt to do the impossible. Delicately perform a balancing act in order to craft a compelling story. We must be acrobats, ninjas, engineers, artists, gourmet chefs and one heck of a seamstress! It’s almost like peeling an onion though. You write and study relentlessly, trying to hone your craft only to find out there’s yet another layer. By then your’re already crying and can’t see straight; blinded by the daunting task of impossibilities. As if someone demanded you rebuild the empire state building one brick at a time…by yourself. Here are some of the toppings that we have to juggle on a daily basis.

  • Characters- protagonists, antagonists, sidekicks, mentors, lovers with all of their complexities and desires.
  • Dialogue- interior monologue, subtext, body language, intonation
  • Settings-  fantasy, historical, urban, cyberpunk 
  • Conflict and Tension- internal, external, story conflict
  • Scenes- structure, actions and reactions
  • Character arc-flat arc, positive arc, negative arc
  • Theme- thematic question
  • Story structure- plot points, actions and reactions
  • Narration and POV
  • Voice and Style

Sounds pretty complicated? Yep. But the more I realize about the writing process on the one hand, the simpler it gets. In fact, you could sum it all up in one measly two syllable word. Which word is it? *drumroll* You guessed it, balance.  I think a well crafted story is ABSOLUTELY, a work of art as it is of balance. I have a health background in physical therapy so I tend to see things through medical lenses.

The Balance Life arrow with beach background

 

Physically speaking there are twelve different interdependent organ systems throughout our body; a trillion cells, working harmoniously to do just ONE THING. Keep us alive? Yes. But more specifically to maintain something called homeostasis. Every organ system although different in function, works towards the same goal. Homeostasis. So what is this homeostasis anyway?  It’s our body’s way of maintaining a dynamic state of equilibrium or balance, in the midst of a changing external environment. When things get out of hand, and trust me they will, bad things will happen. Like, illnesses, sickness, etc these are what we call pathologies in the medical field. Diseases that limit functional ability, progressively deteriorate our brains, and ultimately may lead to death. Exciting eh? Well, writers also have “pathologies” that affect the balance of their writing. Which in turn could make or brake their stories, or even worse, their careers. So I decided to concoct a series dedicated to these type of writing problems, as I experience my own pathology and get rehabilitated by other writers.

THE INFAMOUS INFORMATION DUMP

Since I’ve been studying the craft of writing I’ve heard about the infamous information dump. They’re essentially four kinds of information dumps according to bestselling author and Jedi master KM Weiland over at www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com.

  • The Worldbuilding dump
  • The Backstory dump
  • The Technical dump
  • The Emotional dump

As we’re writing sometimes we tend to go overboard; with our prose, splendid descriptions, or the sheer beauty of our own words but these could be completely unnecessary to the plot or overall story.  It’s just….information just for the sake of informing. But aren’t we supposed to describe things? Show not tell? Deliberately hook our readers into the endless pages of distant realms of fantasy and romance? Yes, and yes. But if it doesn’t advance the plot, it probably doesn’t need to be there. We need to entrust some things to our reader’s imagination then learn how to skillfully use techniques to sprinkle, and not dump, information at the proper time. But this is easier said than done. That’s part of the balancing act as mentioned earlier that we need to learn. The good part is that we can edit and revise these matters out of our manuscript until it’s squeaky clean. Happily our bodies naturally eliminate whatever is unnecessary and tags it as waste. It could be an overabundance of an element or simply a byproduct of metabolism doomed for the toilet bowl. Sounds like editing and revising to me! If we miss this opportunity our WIP (work in progress) will get bloated and weighted down with unnecessary material. Apparently music legend Elvis Presley died of chronic constipation. I had no idea about this. Yikes, I suppose it’s a fine line this whole writing thing.

 

Constipated

 

 

WRITERS, BLOGGERS, CREATIVES WHAT’S YOUR EXPERIENCE? DO YOU INFO DUMP? WHAT’S BEEN YOUR PROCESS? LET’S TALK IN THE COMMENTS!

Additional resources:

5 Ninja Self-Editing Tips to Get You From Rejection to Sale

Are You Telling the Wrong Story?

5 Ways to Trim Your Book’s Word Count, Pt. 1 of 2

5 (More) Ways to Trim Your Book’s Word Count, Pt. 2 of 2

 

 

The World in your Hands

Posted on by Benjamin Thomas

New Future Technology within Palm of Your Hand

WELCOME TO THE WRITING TRAIN FOLKS! 

Get in.  It’s time for a ride.  I’m glad you could join us. 

This is a very historical moment ladies and gents, for it’s the first post of many to come.  I’m hoping to keep the ink wet with words flowing smoothly from the heart to the page.  But this blog isn’t just about me.  It’s you and I intertwined as part of the writing community.  Awesome right?  Writers are the most intriguing people on Earth.  Hands down and second to none.  That means your awesome.

Question.  What if the whole world was in your hands?  What would you do with it?  If you could feel the breadth, width of the entire earth in the grip of your palm?

As writers we may have many fears that ultimately slaughter our dreams of being successful.   Maybe it’s the grim reaper, the killer of dreams.  But okay, so let’s not blame the grim reaper for now.  How about us?  We’re our own worst critic.  Doubt.  Fear.  Dismay.  There’s seems to be an invisible tape recorder playing nonstop in the background.  And boy,  do we know that tune.  We fall for it every time.  Hook, line, and sinker.  “You’ll never make it, you’re simply not good enough.  You’ll never be a writer”.  Or I suppose it could be a fierce zombie crazed energizer bunny, running around demonizing all the would be authors.  Is that what we really fear?  Is success that scary?

Well, I’m no different than the next.  Fears abound.  But hey, let’s turn the tables on ol’ grim.  Embrace the fear, gaze sternly back in it’s fickle eye and welcome him with open arms.  In other words, it’s an opportunity to learn something.  It’s called writing.  I’m discovering that writing is largely a learning process.  A marvelous lifelong learning marathon versus an all out weekend sprint.  A craft that can be learned with training, practice, hiccups, coffee and mistakes.  Yup. Mistakes.  Lots of them.  How else can one learn anything?  I’m certain that no bestselling author hasn’t taken this road.  It’s a long rugged road.  How far will you go?  Don’t travel alone and definitely don’t quit.  It’s a long way back.  Join the train instead.

I’m all in.  How about you?

 

The world is in your hands, open your eyes and make it yours.  Why not give it a story?

 

Join the writing train by following this blog directly or by email.  Find me on twitter @thewritingtrain or on tumblr at The Writing Train.

Well, until the next time…

 

Benjamin