Last week, I gave a class at the LDStorymakers Conference on gesture crutches. You can find my presentation here, but today I’m sharing the resources I cited in class!
Books on the topic
- How to Write a Damn Good Novel: A Step-by-Step No Nonsense Guide to Dramatic Storytelling by James N. Frey on creating characters (the first chapter)
- Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors by Brandilyn Collins
- The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi
Blog posts on gesture crutches
The bulk of my presentation came from my own blog posts, especially my series on gesture crutches: finding gesture crutches (the macro code), tracking & changing gesture crutches and strategies to fix the top 10 gesture crutches.
You can find John Gilstrap quoting his editor, Michaela Hamilton, here.
Other resources
Courses by Margie Lawson including Empowering Characters’ Emotions and Writing Body Language and Dialogue Cues opened my eyes to gesture crutches and started me on the path to take my writing to the next level!
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