Writing can be really hard sometimes. Some days the words flow seamlessly from my finger tips and there other days where I get stuck on every little thing. One things that I have found that has helped me with these mini challenges and road blocks is having a few choice writing cheat sheets on hand that can help me when I’m stuck on how to write a specific scene or character. And so I would like to share these little cheat sheets with you.
Emotion Cheat Sheets
Writing certain emotions are harder for me than others. Especially when writing more obscure emotions that go beyond “happy” and “sad” and “angry”. This is because, sometimes, I can only recall one or two actions that reflect that specific emotion and I don’t want to sound like a broken record when writing their non-verbal cues. “She shook her head”, “She grit her teeth”, “He smirked”, “She smirked”. It can get pretty redundant.
These emotion cheat sheets help me with that. They each give me an emotion and a brief list of mannerisms and reactions associated with that emotion that one can integrate between the dialogue.
Conciseness
This might be more helpful for essay writers or article writers but it can be useful for story writer’s as well. If you have a bad habit of writing overly wordy phrases that could be replaced with a more condensed version of the phrase for clarity, then this cheat is for you. It goes through a few commonly used wordy phrases in writing and suggests replacements.
clarity of writing cheat sheet
Actions that don’t sound repetative
I have a bad habit of over using specific actions in writing.
Look. Walk. And smile.
These are three actions that happen quite a lot in a book. But I personally struggle to find other words that convey the same meaning to avoid sounding redundant. So here are a few cheat sheets I use to help me “dress up” and better describe these actions.
Various ways to integrate “smiling”
The Replacement of very
Yet another cheat sheet that can help you specifically combat the redundancy of overusing the word very.
The Death of Said
Aaaaand here is the last one. And probably the one I struggle the most with. Said. Now contrary to what you might have read online, said is not dead. Let’s not overlook the danger of getting to flowery with our writing. There are still places for simple versions of words. Said will always have a place in writing, But again, this is cheat sheet is made simply for when you fear you’re sounding tedious and like you’re repeating the same word over and over and over and over and over and over again. And sometimes these words and phrases can better describe the tone with which an action is done much better than “said” can.
By the Brooke 
