I’ve been using Becca’s & Angela’s thesauruses for years in my writing. They’re a huge help! I’m wickedly excited about their newest thesaurus, the Urban and Rural Setting Thesaurus! I’ll be using them to help me write Witches of the West.

I was able to get my hands on the Rural Setting Thesaurus early. Here’s what I had to say about it:

Setting can sometimes become static. It’s just there. Also, there are times when you don’t describe it as actively as you could because you’re focused on other things. Also, you sometimes forget all the different senses you use when you walk into an attic. It’s an attic. Dry. Hot. Dusty. Boxes. Done.

This book helps to breathe life into your setting. The other Thesaurus books offered lists of words that could be used in replace of a word you overly use.

This Thesaurus is a bit different. It lists the thing you want to describe, and then gives you several phrases that spur creativity, inject visuals, and help you see your scene in depths you might have otherwise have missed.

These gals have done it again! This is a powerfully helpful tool for any author, from the new to the experienced. I will be using this again and again! I love this book and I love this series! They’re a remarkable tool!

As we storytellers sit before the keyboard to craft our magic, we’re usually laser-focused on the two titans of fiction: plot and character. Yet, there’s a third element that impacts almost every aspect of the tale, one we really need to home in on as well: the setting.

The setting is so much more than a painted backdrop, more than a stage for our characters to tromp across during the scene. Used to its full advantage, the setting can characterize the story’s cast, supply mood, steer the plot, provide challenges and conflict, trigger emotions, help us deliver those necessary snippets of backstory…and that’s just scratching the surface. So the question is this: how do we unleash the full power of the setting within our stories?

Well, there’s some good news on that front. Two new books have released this week that may change the description game for writers. The Urban Setting Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to City Spaces and The Rural Setting Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Personal and Natural Spaces look at the sights, smells, tastes, textures, and sounds a character might experience within 225 different contemporary settings. And this is only the start of what these books offer writers.

In fact, swing by and check out this hidden entry from the Rural Setting Thesaurus: Ancient Ruins.

And there’s one more thing you might want to know more about….

Rock_The_Vault_WHW1Becca and Angela, authors of The Emotion Thesaurus, are celebrating their double release with a fun event going on from June 13-20th called ROCK THE VAULT. At the heart of the Writers Helping Writers site is a tremendous vault, and these two ladies have been hoarding prizes of epic writerly proportions.

A safe full of prizes, ripe for the taking…if the writing community can work together to unlock it, of course.

Ready to do your part? Stop by Writers Helping Writers to find out more!