Interview with Bestselling Authors Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi

Hey friend! I’m so excited to bring you a new interview today with two author’s that have helped my writing so much! Allow me to introduce Angela and Becca…

Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi are writing coaches, international speakers, and co-authors of the bestselling book, The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression and its many sequels. Available in nine languages, their guides are sourced by US universities, recommended by agents and editors, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, and psychologists around the world. To date, this book collection has sold over a million copies.

Long-time writing partners from different countries, Angela (a Canadian) and Becca (an American) are passionate about helping others, especially writers. To this end, they co-founded the popular site Writers Helping Writers®, a description hub for writers, and One Stop for Writers®, an innovative creativity portal for one-of-a-kind tools that give writers exactly what they need to craft unbelievably rich stories and characters. Originally created in partnership with Lee Powell (the creator of Scrivener for Windows and Linux), One Stop for Writers is now a shared venture between Angela and Becca. 

Please visit them at the sites above—they love to connect with people in the writing industry! And if you’re ready to see your writing skills take a giant leap, give the free trial at One Stop for Writers a spin.  

Two of my favorite books by Angela and Becca are The Positive Trait Thesaurus and The Negative Trait Thesaurus. I pull these books off my shelf every time I’m developing a new character or making an old character more interesting.

I reached out to Becca and Angela cause I was curious to hear a little behind-the-scenes info on these particular books, plus I wanted to share their awesome writing resources with you! Happy reading and I hope you enjoy 🙂

Sarah: These books are the only ones of their kind that I‘ve ever seen. What inspired the idea behind the positive and negative trait thesauruses?

Becca: Well, we wrote our first guide, The Emotion Thesaurus, because we both were struggling with how to show emotion effectively, and there wasn’t much information on how to do that. When the book took off, we realized we had inadvertently identified a universal problem for writers. So when it came time to write our next book, we asked ourselves: what aspect of storytelling is difficult for us that many other writers also need help with? Character building was the obvious choice—creating realistic characters with a variety of positive and negative traits that made sense based on their personalities and backgrounds. And that’s how our character trait books came to be.

Sarah: There are SO many traits explored in these books! How did you come up with such a large list of character traits? 

Becca: Oh my gosh, if you could’ve seen the original list, lol. It was a beast. Because we always want to be as comprehensive as possible, we brainstormed as many traits as we could think of. We also considered suggestions from our users about the ones they’d like to see in a resource on the topic. At that point, we had roughly 275 traits—way too many if the books were to be a reasonable length. So we narrowed the list by removing the ones that were synonymous or too similar. We also weeded out ones that were emotions or temporary states of being rather than true traits. Eventually, 202 entries were left to make the final cut.

Sarah: Co-authoring a book seems like a fun yet challenging endeavor. How does the collaboration process between you both work?

Angela: After Becca and I decide which book to work on, we do three things before drafting. First, we think about what information is the most helpful about the topic and create the thesaurus template so we know exactly what brainstorming material to include in each entry. (So, for the Positive Trait and Negative Trait Thesaurus books, the template included things like POSSIBLE CAUSES, ASSOCIATED BEHAVIORS AND ATTITUDES, ASSOCIATED THOUGHTS, etc.). Next, we choose which entries to include. As Becca mentioned above, there’s a lot of back-and-forth as we can only include 100 or so per book, meaning we must narrow it down to the most helpful. Finally, we create an outline of all the ‘how-to’ teaching content found at the start of a book. While the thesaurus entries are helpful for brainstorming, writers need to know how to use that information effectively, and that’s what we cover in this section of the book.

Once these three action items are finished, Becca and I split the entries between us, and we each take half of the ‘how-to’ outline. We start drafting our halves and swap them down the road. This happens a few times, so by the time we’re done, our voices and writing styles have unified.

Sarah: Did you dedicate a specific time or place where you worked on writing this book? What does your usual writing routine look like? 

Angela: Because Becca and I are on different time zones and have our own life stuff going on, we set an overall deadline to have our halves completed. Becca creates a timeline for us to follow all the way from drafting to production so we stay on course and hit our completion date.

Sarah: The entries for each trait are all so comprehensive! How did you research the traits for these two thesauruses? 

Becca: We started each entry by developing the definition and looking for well-known fictional examples of each. With a working definition and a variety of characters as examples, we were able to nut out the rest of the information. We also knew the role psychology plays when you’re talking about personality and traits, and we wanted our information to include that, so we used as many of those resources as we could in our research. The psychological aspect was imperative to get right, so once the books were drafted, we had them vetted by a psychologist and therapist.

Sarah: How has your nonfiction writing influenced how you write your own fictional stories? Did the research for these thesauruses influence your present approach to character development in any way? 

Becca: No matter how much Angela and I know about a nonfiction book topic, there’s always so much more that we don’t know. And we want to be able to provide a complete tutorial of that storytelling element for writers. This equates to a lot of research for a new thesaurus before a single word is written, and we end up learning way more than we did when we started. That information naturally works its way into our own fiction writing (when we have time for it).

Sarah: Reading is such an important aspect of every writer’s life. Are there any great novels or books on the craft of writing which you could recommend? 

Angela: Oh boy, where to start? We’ve read so many on writing craft over the years. If you twisted my arm and forced me to name some of the must-reads, I would suggest Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Story Genius, Writing 21st Century Fiction, Save the Cat and the Hero’s 2 Journeys Streaming Series.

(For our full list, check out our reading recommendations here.)

Sarah: What advice would you give to a novelist working on their first book?

Angela: Don’t rush. I think the biggest mistake writers make is being in a big hurry to publish. Give yourself time to learn, experiment, and enjoy the journey. There are many great sites to help you (here are a few I recommend), and mentors all around us! I also highly recommend this page of resources for help in all areas of writing, editing, creativity, and the business of writing.

Sarah: You recently crossed the 1 million books sold milestone—congratulations! What is next on the horizon for you both? Any new books in the works? 

Becca: That milestone is still somewhat surreal. It’s galvanized us to keep doing what we’ve always done—provide books, resources, and workshops to help writers improve their storytelling skills. Our next project is actually a revamp of Emotion Amplifiers. This companion to The Emotion Thesaurus is currently an e-booklet of 15 states of being (hunger, illness, attraction, inebriation, etc.) that can increase tension, trigger stronger emotional responses for characters, and complicate their situations. It’s an important topic that deserves a bit more airtime, so we’re turning this resource into a full-fledged book with both print and digital options. Look for it in the spring of 2024! 

Visit Becca & Angela:

Thank you Angela and Becca for allowing me to interview you! It’s been a pleasure!

To learn more about One Stop for Writers, check out my blog post review about it!