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What if Portraying Character Emotions Didn’t Have to Be So Hard?
Tired of repeating the same gestures and facial expressions in your fiction?
The Energize Your Writing Toolkit is a body language thesaurus created for writers who want fresh ways to show character emotions without slowing down their writing. With 4,000+ prompts organized into easy-to-use categories, you can quickly find ideas for facial expressions, gestures, movement, voice, and other nonverbal cues—and get back to your story.
Snatch Up the Energize Your Writing Toolkit Today for Just $37 Before the Timer Runs Out (45% Off!)
Are your characters acting a bit . . . boring? All fiction authors yearn to create compelling characters. Unfortunately, your heroes, heroines, and supporting cast don’t always cooperate.
You’ve read books with wonderful characters you can’t stop thinking about and want your readers to react the same way. How fantastic would it be if your romance scenes sizzled, fight scenes crackled with tension, and sad parts stirred readers to tears?
There’s only one small problem. . .
☹️ When you sit at the keyboard, your mind goes blank. All that pops into your head are trite phrases like “She looked at him” and “He smiled at her.”
☹️ You’ve been planning your protagonist’s big scene all day. The fury! The embarrassment! Then after half an hour of staring at the screen and hitting the backspace button, you write, “Jill was mad and mortified.” You’d love to write something more original, but your muse has apparently ditched you and gone on vacation.
☹️ Your editor politely points out that you’ve used “glared” 44 times and “sigh” 57 times. “And why is everyone always taking a deep breath?” she asks. “It’s like they all have asthma.”
Will keep my imagination flowing.
“Having the toolkit at my disposal will give me material to reference back to and keep my imagination flowing. It will be a huge relief to not stop my writing process to ponder over how to describe nonverbal communication. I look forward to adding my own notes to the new binder I’ve just added to my shelf.” M.F. Adele
Staggering!
“The completeness of the attachment file is staggering. There’s something for every emotion!” J.T. Rath
Useful tool!
“Now that I am at the editing phase, I will be looking to replace my ‘telling’ with ‘showing’, thanks to this course and Cheat Sheets. Thank you for putting together such a useful tool to add to my toolkit!” Bobbie Carlton-Hess
Keeps your writing fresh and unique
“I appreciate the organized emotion lists. These definitely make writing faster and more engaging. It’s easy to get lazy with writing, especially when an idea is desperately trying to get out with lightning speed. This tool keeps your writing fresh and unique.” USA Today Bestselling Author Amy Proebstel
Imagine Having Thousands of Body Language Cues and Nonverbal Prompts at Your Fingertips
That means no more:
❌ Wasting time gazing out the window.
❌ Succumbing to laziness and glossing over pivotal scenes as you race to get the book done.
❌ Struggling to figure out how to convey an emotion.
❌ Getting hung up on little details.
❌ Overusing trite phrases and body language cues.
Instead, you’ll:
✔️ Keep your imagination flowing and refresh your writing.
✔️ Come up with unique ways to describe reactions and emotions.
✔️ Replace telling with showing and write your story in a more balanced way.
✔️ Flesh out your characters by giving them added depth and believability.
✔️ Build your nonverbal library over time.
BRILLIANT!
“This course is simply brilliant! The printables sit conveniently in a binder on my desk to refer to during all phases of the writing process. This course provides the knowledge to save authors hundreds in editing fees. Do we still need editors? Absolutely! However, they won’t have as much work to do to help you make your book the best it can be.” Lisa Hawes
Focused My Writing
“The careful mix of dialogue, nonverbal communication, exposition, pacing, and outright creativity is essential to any fiction piece. This lesson served to focus my writing back to creating that seamless balance, particularly pertaining to nonverbal communication. Thank you for harnessing your talent to provide some of us Tasmanian Devils of frenetic writing production the opportunity to focus and learn something valuable.” Michelle Lovato
Hi, I’m Stacy Juba.
Through my online courses and freelance developmental editing services, I provide tools to help writers develop and polish their stories and get organized with their writing career.
I’m also a mom of two and have more than 700 books on my Kindle, an obsession with the TV show Supernatural, and a fascination with office supplies and planners.
I originally created the Energize Your Writing Toolkit to enhance the emotional depth of my own characters. It became an invaluable resource as I crafted stories about amateur sleuths, theme park princesses, teen hockey players, and teen psychics, along with their supporting casts of friends, families, enemies, and love interests.
Here Are a Few Amazon Reviews Praising My Characters
Once I became a freelance editor, I realized that other fiction writers could benefit from my body language and nonverbal communication cheat sheets too, so I expanded the resource into the Energize Your Writing Toolkit. It combines the kinds of character emotion prompts I use in my own writing with guidance drawn from my experience helping authors strengthen their manuscripts.
My goal is to save writers time and make the writing process a little easier. As a freelance editor and online course creator, I’ve helped hundreds of authors with their projects. I know what a difference a great writing resource can make and hope you’ll take some time to explore my toolkit.
Show Character Emotions Without Starting From Scratch
Get the ultimate shortcut to fleshing out your characters’ behavior and reactions with the Energize Your Writing Toolkit: Cheat Sheets for Character Emotions. Most writers are so focused on plotting, creating dialogue, world-building, and meeting deadlines that they slack off on nonverbal communication.
As a result, scenes can feel much less dynamic on the page than they did in the author’s head. Some writers can’t put their finger on what’s missing while others realize that the emotion is lacking, but don’t know how to fix it. When writers struggle with how to convey their characters’ feelings, it throws off their groove, slows their writing pace, and can even stall a project dead in its tracks.
Agents and editors who evaluate these lackluster manuscripts make comments like:
- “Flat, cardboard characters.”
- “Your characters need fleshing out.”
- “Your protagonist’s motivation is unclear.”
If the book is published, readers post Amazon reviews saying they didn’t connect with the characters, disliked them, or found their actions unbelievable.
Those Frustrations End Today
A Practical Body Language Reference You Can Use Again and Again
The Energize Your Writing Toolkit gives fiction writers a searchable reference for showing emotions through body language and nonverbal communication.
You’ll get more than 4,000 prompts covering character reactions, gestures, facial expressions, movement, voice, and other nonverbal cues, along with examples from published books, a workbook, and guidance for using the toolkit in your own writing.
Develop a System.
Put the pages into a binder you can pull out when you need to show character emotions, describe body language, or decide how a character might react.
Get Inspired.
Find inspiration when you’re stuck or when a scene needs more emotion. Use the prompts as written, adapt them, or combine ideas.
Make It Your Own.
Use the blank lines and print extra pages to add your own phrases and categories so you can refer to them again and again.
SHORT AND INSIGHTFUL
“I learned more than expected in such a short period of time. I found the material easy to comprehend and helpful in ways I wasn’t expecting. It has left me eager to go through my current WIP and fix a few issues that were pointed out. Will definitely be recommending this mini-course.” Maegan Fielder
SAVES ME SO MUCH TIME
“Energize Your Writing really has made it so much simpler to add rich, nonverbal communication to my writing without losing my focus and flow—now, I can easily flip to the relevant emotion in the toolkit and pick an appropriate phrasing in seconds.
I still usually end up personalizing the wording more on later drafts (and I love that there’s room in the Toolkit to add my own turns of phrase as I think of them), but it saves me so much time and gives me a stronger product to work with when revising. Less stopping + more writing=a happy writer! One of the really nice things is that, as I use the Toolkit as a reference more and more, I can feel myself slowly needing to refer to it less and less as I internalize more elements about the emotions that are common to my characters.” Elijah M.
Priceless!
“The emotions cheat sheet will be a valuable resource in my edit of this novel and especially in the second that is in progress. The section on how to use the cheat sheets is a valuable resource in and of itself. Of course the actual sheets on each emotion are priceless. They went into areas that I had never considered when I wrote my first novel.” Daryle Lefler
What’s Included in the Energize Your Writing Toolkit
☑️ 4,000+ body language and nonverbal prompts that span 21 categories and numerous subcategories, all packaged inside a 100-page downloadable PDF, to guide you as you’re writing and editing
☑️ A walk-through video and detailed written instructions outlining how the toolkit works and tips to maximize its usefulness
☑️ Written lesson and video giving a solid overview of why nonverbal communication is important and how to work it into your book
☑️ 11-page workbook to identify repetitive writing habits and increase your awareness
☑️ 10 Hacks to Creating Characters That Jump Off the Page cheat sheet for even more energizing tips
You Didn’t Think I Was Done Yet, Did You?
In case you haven’t heard, I like to overdeliver! In addition to the Energize Your Writing Toolkit, you’ll get three bonuses to help you develop your characters and vary their emotional reactions.
🥳 1. The Personality Playbook: 30 Secret-Weapon Questions to Ask Your Characters – Do you ever feel stumped about why your characters are acting a certain way? Or maybe you’re not sure what they would do next. Here is a great strategy that most authors overlook: talking to your characters. Interview your protagonist (and any other cast members) as if you were a reporter. Use these 30 journaling prompts to pick your characters’ brains and see what you uncover.
🥳 2. The Nifty Nonverbal Communication Navigator Wheel – Remember to sprinkle varied types of nonverbal communication into your book with this helpful reminder of categories. Post it near your computer or put it with your notes for easy reference.
🥳 3. The Emotion Energizer Wheel – Hang this by your desk for a refresher on the most useful emotions to give your characters more depth.
Ready to Erase Stale Phrases From Your Fiction?
If You Act Before the Timer Runs Out, You’ll Get Lifetime Access With a One-Time Payment of:
$67 $37
You might be wondering, what’s the catch? Hey, I get it. If I’d seen an offer for $37 that was about to expire, I might be skeptical too. But I promise, there’s no catch. I just want to help you make your book as strong as possible without the headache. If we don’t know each other yet, keep scrolling for more testimonials and my money-back guarantee.
EXCELLENT RESOURCE FOR WRITERS
“If you’ve been struggling to make your characters seem more alive, then the character emotions e-book & mini-course is for you!” Camille Flores
HELPFUL IN MULTIPLE WAYS
“I enjoyed this course for the twofold approach it takes. By providing the shortcut document, I now have a powerful weapon against repetition and the questions got me thinking about the importance of this.” Jordan Rath
WONDERFUL TIP SHEETS
“I didn’t realize there were so many other emotional nonverbal cues I could use, including ones related to sight. I appreciate now that I need to dig more deeply into my characters’ emotional experience to find the right physical clues appropriate to them. All the wonderful downloads and tip sheets! They will all help me so much as I edit. It was great! I can’t wait to edit using these tips.”
You're Protected by the Energize Your Writing No-Hassle Guarantee
The Energize Your Writing Toolkit comes with a 100% unconditional money-back guarantee, so your purchase is risk-free.
There’s a good reason clients and students describe me as generous, professional, enthusiastic, and insightful—it’s because I put tremendous care into every course and stand behind everything I teach.
If you go through the lessons and feel the course didn’t deliver the guidance promised, just email us within 7 days and you’ll get a full refund.
If you request a refund, we will ask you for feedback on how the course didn’t meet your expectations, so we can improve our marketing messaging in the future.
GOOD WAY TO EXPRESS CHARACTER EMOTION
“This course won’t take much time to complete, but it will help a lot with using nonverbal communication in your fiction to express character emotion.” Ree Larsen
GETS YOU THINKING
“I needed a reminder to consider nonverbal cues far more carefully. The toolkit is going to be handy when I write my next story.” Fiona Ayerst
Can Look Through IT TO Find What I'm Looking For
“I’ve been working to incorporate nonverbal communication and found it difficult for a variety of reasons. I like that this is essentially a reference guide. I can look through it to find what I’m looking for and use that to guide me as I go or when I’m going back through my work.” A.M. Williams
Complete Catalogue
“Such a complete catalogue of useful, common emotions and the associated gestures and body language will allow me to more easily pick and choose for any and every scene.” Liana Mackenzie
Made ME REALize a need
“I’m in the middle of my first book, and I feel like I don’t have nearly enough nonverbal communication going with it at this point. It made me realize the need to include a lot more nonverbal communication in my stories—current and future.” Michelle A Nieves
Q. Who is the Energize Your Writing Toolkit best suited for?
A. This toolkit is ideal for fiction writers who want more varied, believable ways to show character emotions through body language, facial expressions, gestures, and other nonverbal cues. It works well at any stage of the writing process, whether you’re drafting new scenes or revising existing ones.
Q. Is this a course, a reference guide, or both?
A. It’s both. You’ll learn how to use nonverbal communication effectively in your fiction, while the cheat sheets serve as an ongoing body language thesaurus you can consult while writing and editing. With 4,000+ prompts, you can quickly find ideas for showing character emotions without having to come up with every description from scratch.
Q. How do writers typically use the toolkit while writing?
A. Many writers keep the toolkit nearby and refer to it when they need fresh ways to describe body language or show a character’s emotions. Instead of stopping to search for the right gesture, facial expression, or nonverbal cue, they can quickly find ideas and get back to writing.
Q. Will this help me avoid repetitive body language and emotions?
A. Yes. The toolkit gives you thousands of body language and nonverbal prompts so you can move beyond repetitive smiles, sighs, shrugs, glances, and other overused reactions. You’ll also learn a system for expanding the lists with your own descriptions as you write.
Q. Is this more useful for drafting or editing?
A. The toolkit can be used during both drafting and editing. Some writers use it to spark ideas while drafting, while others rely on it during revisions to replace telling with showing.
Q. Do I need to read the cheat sheets in order, or can I jump around?
A. You can jump around. The toolkit is designed for flexible use, allowing writers to flip to the emotions or sections they need at any time.
Q. Does this replace the need for an editor?
A. No. The toolkit helps writers strengthen emotional depth and nonverbal communication, which can make revisions smoother, but it does not replace professional editing.
Q. What format is the toolkit delivered in?
A. The course materials are delivered digitally and include a downloadable PDF, instructional videos, and printable resources that writers can reuse as often as needed.
Q. What happens once I purchase, and how long do I have access?
A. Purchases will be made through the Shortcuts for Writers Thrivecart Learn platform. You will be directed to set up a password and will be granted access to the classroom where you will find the lessons, videos, and downloadable files. You’ll have lifetime access, so you can revisit the lessons at any time.
Q. Can I share this toolkit with my writer friends or clients?
A. You’re welcome to share a link where they can buy the course. You can even join the affiliate program and get a commission on sales. However, you may not share your purchase or distribute copies of the Energize Your Writing Toolkit content with anyone else who has not yet purchased it. You can read the full Terms & Conditions here.
By downloading, printing, or otherwise using our products or content for personal use, you in no way assume any ownership rights of the content—it is still company property. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of any materials found in the program or content shall constitute infringement.
Bring More Variety and Emotion to Your Characters
Unlock Instant Access to:
☑️ 4,000+ nonverbal prompts that span 21 categories and numerous subcategories, all packaged inside a 100-page downloadable PDF, to guide you as you’re writing and editing
☑️ A walk-through video and detailed written instructions outlining how the toolkit works and tips to maximize its usefulness
☑️ Written lesson and video giving a solid overview of why nonverbal communication is important and how to work it into your book
☑️ 11-page workbook to identify repetitive writing habits and increase your awareness
☑️ 10 Hacks to Creating Characters That Jump Off the Page cheat sheet for even more energizing tips
Plus You’ll Get These Fantastic Bonuses!
🥳 1. The Personality Playbook: 30 Secret-Weapon Questions to Ask Your Characters – Do you ever feel stumped about why your characters are acting a certain way? Or maybe you’re not sure what they would do next. Here is a great strategy that most authors overlook: talking to your characters. Interview your protagonist (and any other cast members) as if you were a reporter. Use these 30 journaling prompts to pick your characters’ brains and see what you uncover.
🥳 2. The Nifty Nonverbal Communication Navigator Wheel – Remember to sprinkle varied types of nonverbal communication into your book with this helpful reminder of categories. Post it near your computer or put it with your notes for easy reference.
🥳 3. The Emotion Energizer Wheel – Hang this by your desk for a refresher on the most useful emotions to give your characters more depth.
If You Act Before the Timer Runs Out, You’ll Get Lifetime Access With a One-Time Payment of:
$67 $37
Give yourself a reference for those moments when you’re stuck on how a character should look, move, sound, or react. With the Energize Your Writing Toolkit at your fingertips, you’ll have thousands of prompts to draw from as you bring more variety and emotion to your scenes.
Disclaimer: Shortcuts for Writers doesn’t promise any specific results as a result of purchasing this training (eg – you have to put in the work) and any results, testimonials, or figures quoted on this page are not intended to imply guaranteed financial gains. I present testimonials and insights about other people’s experiences with my program for purposes of illustration only. They are not intended to represent or guarantee that current or future clients will achieve the same or similar results; rather, these testimonials represent what is possible for illustrative purposes only.
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Terms & Conditions: You have 7 days starting the day after payment is received to preview the course material before your refund period expires. If you request a refund after the 7-day period, your request will be denied. Please read the full terms and conditions for this course here.