Thinking Like A Romance Writer: The Sensual Writer's Sourcebook of Words and Phrases

Useful if you write, or just for imagination.

I briefly scanned the book before purchasing to see what the book contained and if it was worth the download. After looking at the sneak peek and chapters I hurriedly pushed the buy button on my kindle. Uploaded it and started to check it out and I have to say I'm seriously impressed with it. First the author breaks down all the physical categories like hair, head, eyes, nose, lips, teeth, tongue, arms, legs, feet, chests, breasts etc. Then you have another Part II which describes Senses, Feelings, and Facial Expressions. Part III is Describing Intimacy and you've got Voice, Breathing, Kissing, Sex under that one. Then under each section they are broken down into categories. So for Eyes you've got Root Words: awareness, eyes, focus, gaze, glance, perception, stare, vision. Then it goes to Eye colors: amber, black, blue, brown, gray, green, hazel, and violet. Then it breaks it down further for you into Green Variations, Blue Variations, Brown/Amber Variations, Violet Variations, Black Variations, Gray Variations. Under each of those variations we have several other forms of blue (like aqua, aquamarine, arctic blue, atlantic blue, azure, baby blue, etc.) Then she's got adjectives to describe each of those fantastic eye colors (adorable, adventurous, aggressive, amorous, angry, anxious, appraising, etc.) Then she gives you a few examples of Descriptive combinations for each. (cold, hungry eyes; dark, deep eyes; deep brown eyes. etc.) Then we have Verbs-Things Eyes Can Do Adjusted, admired, appraised, assayed, averted, bathed, beheld, betrayed, blazed, etc. Then we have Descriptive Phrases having to do with Eyes. He appraised her curvaceous figure. Her eyes glazed with need. His cold hungry eyes peered through the darkness. Please note the above is all from the author and not complete...its just a few examples of each category to give you examples. The adjectives/verbs used to describe each section are pretty lengthy and just reading one section at a time has my muse kicking in with all my current stories and picking a word/phrase from each to come up wiht my own unique sentences for my stories. "His whiskey colored eyes roved over her figure scrutinizing. Appearing satisfied with his perusal, he winked at her before his talons closed over her again, locking her in his grasp." Just an example of how motivating this book can be to our crazy Muses. Mine is on overdrive since reading. The first thing I'm going to do is go over all of my characters and their body parts (hair, chest, mouth etc) and then I'm going to go through this book one by one to fill out each so I have them when I'm ready to write. I bought another book at the same time TheSEXaurus: Sexy Words for Writers. It didn't separate the sections in a way that made sense to me so that book was OK but I definitely preferred this authors books. I love how she actually indexed it at the beginning so if I'm looking for just "chest" info I can go to the beginning and click chest and it takes me right where I need to go. Since this isn't a physical book I really appreciate that because it makes using it a TON easier for me. I did grab my copy for free....however after checking out the book and all it has to offer myself I would gladly paid the $2.99 she has it listed for. This book is very much worth its weight in gold. I kept thinking to myself something is missing from my writing and for the life of me I couldn't figure out what it was. It was this book and the descriptions. I love the variations and it has definitely inspired me to go back over some of my current works and use this book. My favorite section is the Verbs/Adjectives for what each "part" can do. If you're looking for a bit more inspiration in your writing, I'd highly recommend you check this book out! I'm off right now to go work on my character sheets and my Kindle Fire with this book will be in my other hand. Thank you so much to the author for putting something like this together. I can't even imagine the amount of time it took to put together, especially with separating each section but I appreciate the hard work you did in doing that because as a writer it makes it that much easier for me to jump in and not get distracted or annoyed by the formatting or the way its laid out.

First I am finding this book very useful and worth the couple of dollars that it cost. But I would have paid a lot more to have a hard copy. I like the permanence of hard copies and the way you can flick through them and have them sitting beside you when you have your screen open to your manuscript. Whereas the kindle keeps going into save mode. I am a fan of Kindle but I have to hide mine from my husband if I want to get near it, so I often use Kindle Cloud Reader. I don't like the cloud reader, because you can't organise your books, delete books, etc. You never really own them, you can't for example loan them to someone, when you die they die with you, etc etc. On the plus side, you can hyperlink with a kindle book which is really helpful in a resource type book. I may be greedy but in an ideal world, if worldwide postage was less, I'd like to own both. As a writer I cringe at the thought that we should be limited to a list of clichéd descriptive words. But as a romance writer I do understand the concept and tend to agree that largely, but not exclusively, some words work better than others. Do not be put off by the sample pages given by Amazon. This book goes further than to just provide words for hair, eye, height descriptions. The romance writer wants to describe what their hands are doing, how the skin feels, and what are in the depths of those eyes. For those writers that need to add an explicit scene, but don't exclusively write erotica, this book would be most useful. For the erotic writer, the chapters on erotic words are a bit brief. The extent of the book, is character description. You won't find descriptive words about scenery or clothing. I did wonder at some of the suggestions. For example, there is a lengthy thesaurus for the word "said". I know that editors hate tags like "she laughed", so use the book with caution. I would recommend using it as an aid, not a bible.

This is a helpful reference guide. Very handy for all writers. I will keep to look back through for notes.

This book was printed on the day I ordered it so it was brand new when I received it. It arrived quickly. The information is a great guide for those who are taking a stab at writing and can't always find the words for what they want to say. The whole book is full of descriptive words and phrases. For example, if you were trying to describe someone's hair it lists hair colors, styles, long/short, curly/short, flyaway, frizzy and so on. An example phrase; She reached up to fix her windswept hair.

Instead of me having to go through hundreds or romance and erotica novels to get ideas the author has done the work for you. She breaks this up into easy to look up sections: jaws, eyes, etc. And doesn't just give you adjectives but descriptive sentences as well. Again, broken down into succinct categories. A brilliant aide & reference for romance/erotica authors in one book.

I find myself in Respectful and Polite disagreement with the 5 and 4 star reviewers... Unless their reviews were for a book that could be used as guide for "How NOT to Write for Today's Romance Writers." The first and best use of this book is: Romance Novel Cliches to Avoid! Each one, many of which gave me the pleasure of recalling my romance reading of perhaps a dozen or more years ago when these phrases would have been "normal" usage, is a very old dog, however beloved that may be. But too much has been written now, and the craft in all genres has so improved, the colloquial language has moved on, evolved and expanded in a way that dates these once fresh phrases. They could be used to build a certain kind of character - an old Aunt, a new friend from a far away place where American English usage is her 2nd or 3rd language and this is what she learned of English. That would be fun. But it is far from the contemporary language of 2015...16.... which changes faster than ever. I needed only to see the words "Burning Loins" to make this a perfect charicature of some wonderful novels well past their time. Some things aren't meant to be revived. But I very much enjoyed the trip down writers' memory lane when it was all fresh and new and vastly exciting and so risque you hid the cover of your book!

I bought this guide in paperback, and it's a great supplement for showing instead of telling and evoking new images for the reader. If I'm struggling with a unique way to describe a body part for a character, this guide is now one of many I turn to.

As a baby author this book has been great tool

A helpful resource

The book is good for kickstarting ideas in your mind from the words and phrases described. Have to be careful however to avoid the overused cliches in descriptions. Some parts of the book are more useful than others.

It is a great tool to help you on your path as a writer! Easy to read and gives you food for thought to incorporate into your writing. Thanks Dahlia!

As an amateur writer I need to be able to get a feel for the characters and find books like these NECESSARY in a big way.