5 Techniques for Showing a Character’s Suppressed Emotion

Today’s guest post is by Becca Puglisi. Character emotion, when written well, links directly to reader empathy. Why? Because when...
The post 5 Techniques for Showing a Character’s Suppressed Emotion appeared first on C. S. Lakin.
https://www.livewritethrive.com/2026/05/06/5-techniques-for-showing-a-characters-suppressed-emotion/

#Fiction #BeccaPuglisi #Fear #thesaurus

History of the Eurovision Song Contest

How Eurovision became the “Olympics for singing” The first Eurovision was held on May 24, 1956, in Lugano,…
#Eurovision #britannica #dictionary #encyclopaedia #encyclopedia #EurovisionSongContest2026 #online #reference #store #thesaurus
https://www.europesays.com/europe/31451/

Editing the fanfic, I searched for how many times people, mostly Gabe, have sighed and frowned. And others, but those are the most used. Nearly 30 times for one of them which seems excessive even in 7,500 words.

Phrases like “set their jaw” seem clunky and perhaps difficult to imagine, even though they do that in the tv show, it’s quite different in writing.

Thesaurus website gave me a few options, but asking DuckDuckGo (aka googling, I just embraced the Duck a while ago), and I struck gold. Swathes of alternatives and not even in paid ebooks, just there on the page. I’m in love.

Now not to overdo all the different words for similar things. The repetition might be easier to read than being yanked all over the place. I remove some and add a little to the dialogue eg “heh” rather than “they laugh”. But then I feel my dialogue does on and on with little mention of expression and action.

https://kathysteinemann.com/Musings/expressions/

#writing #words #synonyms #thesaurus

Question the question

When seeking assistance, the questions we ask inform the thinking of the machines or people giving answers. My initial work experience involved helping people research information. How to find books. How to search the internet or databases.

One of the most important skills we taught was to locate salient terms as they influence the answers we get. The more closer to the jargon, the better the research one would find. Better relevant terms, yields results with improved usefulness. Vocabulary worked wonders. Knowing the topic in ways to manipulate the search made research work.

As a result, working in IT, I monitor buzzwords and learn about them. I try to understand them in the current and potential future context. And watch their progress.

AI are replacing search engines, but the same issue remains. We still have to know what to ask to get the right answers.

Additionally, we have to know how to determine the answer validity. For that, we need knowledge to fact check.