Well, after all that tension, I thought we could all use some stress relief, eh? Every once in a while, after all, you do have to let it out.

The other day I was reading a blog post that mentioned making someone laugh. “Not just guffawing, but outright laughing,” they clarified (okay, that’s not what they said, but that’s basically the idea). But that note left me scratching my head: isn’t guffawing harder than laughing?

So today I bring you a game! From two thesasauruses (those are dinosaurs that know a lot of words), I gathered all the synonyms for laughter:

amusement be in stitches break up burst cachinnate cackle chortle chuckle convulsed crack up crow die laughing fit fracture gesture giggle glee grin guffaw heehaw

hilarity howl merriment mirth peal rejoicing roar roll in the aisles scream shout shriek snicker snigger snort sound split one’s sides titter wakka wakka wakka whoop yuck

In the comments, let’s rank these from the most hilarity/hardest laughter to lightest. (And feel free to leave out ones you don’t know. “Cachinnate”?!) Note that this list includes both nouns and verbs.

Photo by Jackson Carson

Well, we’re winding down the series on suspense, tension and surprise. We’ve looked into assessing our stories, ratcheting up the tension and increasing the suspense. We’ve used lots and lots of resources (the most I have for any series), and I’ve talked a lot about things I’ve found in looking at my own work.

But, man, that still seems a little one-sided. I’d hate to leave you in suspense over your greatest suspense, tension or surprise issues—and I’d hate for all of us to miss out on the things you‘ve found to make your work better in these areas.

So, do you have any other questions or fixes on suspense, tension or surprise? (Comments and questions here may get “promoted” into posts of their own, so ask or share away—and be sure to put your link in the URL box!)

Photo credits: question—Svilen Mushkatov

Most writers, of course, learned to write in school—the teacher stuck a pencil in their hand and showed them how to form the letters. Another teacher later on taught them about words and sentences and parts of speech and punctuation.

Of course, everyone learns those things, and not everyone goes on to want to be a writer. Personally, I learned a lot from writing—a lot. I wrote all through high school. I wrote in my freshman year of college, and then I drifted away from writing for several years while I finished school, got married, and started my family, though somewhere in the back of my mind, I still wanted to be a writer.

And of course, I’ve learned a lot in other ways as well. Writer’s conferences are a lot of fun and extremely useful, but most of the time aren’t designed to hit the techniques very hard (unless you go to a more one-on-one track). Critiques from trusted friends (and strangers!) have been invaluable.

And then there are the books, of course. I hit the public library and read almost every writing technique book they had, my favorites being How to Write a Damn Good Novel and How to Write a Damn Good Novel, II by James N. Frey, and Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass, among others that escape me now.

But honestly, even these things are kind of advanced—they don’t, for example, cover basic things like showing vs. telling. And, um, I’ve kind of forgotten how I learned that.

So how did you learn writing—the basics and the advanced stuff?

Photo by Schmorgie13

I’m getting ready to make our series on plotting into a free PDF. In one of my free writing guides, I included some “bonus features”—resources that weren’t posted on my blog in the original series, but that are pretty darn awesome.

I’ve been collecting bonus features again this time around, and I have a few. But I’d love to see your favorite resources and methods for plotting.

What do you use to plot? Share your favorite resources in the comments and I’ll include an attribution link for you in the free PDF version of the plotting series!

Photo credits: question—Svilen Mushkatov

I’m thinking for our September series, we’ll do something collaborative: a book club. But since we’re all writers, I though we could read a writing craft book together and discuss it—possibly chapter by chapter.

Why? Because although we can get a lot out of reading these kinds of books and pondering them ourselves, I think we can get even more out of discussing the concepts and applying them to our work, and to one another’s. And even if you can’t get ahold of the book, you can still participate in the discussion.

So what book should we choose? (Feel free to check your local library for availability—no need to pay to participate!)

Click through to the post to take the poll and choose our writing craft book club choice!

What do you think? What book should we read—or is this not the sort of thing you’re interested in?