Happy days! I essentially finished the third draft of my second novel, Staking A Claim, last Thursday and celebrated in style by having two slices of lime in my afternoon rum and coke. I say essentially, because it’s not quite complete – I’ve left a few notes to myself sprinkled throughout the manuscript with reference to details that I still need to iron out. 

Since the novel is mostly set in the small South Island town of Cromwell in 2003, some of these details relate to the cost of things back then and there. For instance, one thing I wanted to know was how much it cost to purchase a brand new Hyundai Santa Fe in New Zealand in 2003. I sent an email to Hyundai New Zealand, figuring that if anyone was going to know, surely it would be them. Rather than answer my question, however, they just subscribed me to their mailing list, so now I get daily emails prompting me to purchase a new Hyundai. I’d love to, especially an Ioniq 5, but the cost of a new Hyundai is not in our budget. I’d have to sell the house first, and I’m not sure there’s enough room in an Ioniq to sleep a family of five. However, I’m still none the wiser as to the historical cost of a Santa Fe. 

Interestingly, my other emails to private businesses also fell on deaf ears. I wanted to find out more about house, land, and rent prices in Cromwell in 2003, so I contacted a couple of house building companies with franchises in the area, as well as some local real estate agencies. I got nothing in reply from any of them, not even an email prompting me to buy or build a new house. On the other hand, I contacted the Ministry of Social Development with a question about historical welfare payments. Within a week or so I received a letter informing me that my request had been processed under the Official Information Act. The letter included several links to central and local government websites where I was not only able to find the answers to the particular questions I’d asked, but also, with a bit of digging, the answers to my queries about house, land, and rent prices in Cromwell in 2003. I’m not sure what this says about the pros and cons of the state versus private enterprise, but it did make me think that at least some of my tax dollars had been spent in a useful way.

The other notes I’ve left to myself are mostly to do with the physical manifestation of emotions in characters. Say for instance, a character is happy. They can demonstrate this by smiling. But you don’t want to overuse the word, ‘smile’, so perhaps they might ‘grin’, or maybe, if they’re exceptionally happy, they could ‘beam’. And that’s about it – there aren’t many synonyms for ‘smile’ in the English language. If none of those words will do, but I still want that character to express their happiness, then they’re going to need to do something else. So, I’ve got several instances in the novel where I wasn’t quite sure what that ‘something else’ should be, but rather than slowing myself down racking my brains trying to figure it out then and there, I’ve left a note to come back to it later with my secret weapon, The Emotion Thesaurus.

This is a fantastic book for writers – you just look up the emotion you’re wanting your character to express, and it lists a whole range of ways in which that emotion can be physically manifested.

Here’s just one example: One character, (let’s call her Macie), has just said something to a second character (let’s call him Abeeku, which is apparently the Ghanian word for one who is born on a Wednesday), about which he is somewhat dubious. Rather than rolling his eyes, which would be my go to response, or emotional crutch, as Ackerman and Puglisi would say, he could instead (and this is just a small sample of the available options):

• Bite or chew on his lip;
• Hem or haw;
• Reference similar events from the past that did not pan out (here’s looking at you, Dad); or (and this is my personal favourite)
• Wrinkle his nose like there’s a bad smell.

So, the next time someone screws up their nose at you, just be aware it might not have anything to do with the state of your armpits or underpants; they might just be a little skeptical.

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