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They do a little. One of the shelves in my home office...

Just remember that having them on the shelf just makes them available to use when you need them. To get results, they need to be more than colorful decoration

The Positive Trait Thesaurus: a Writer's Guide to Character Attributes by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi. As you might guess, Positive Traits is the opposite of yesterday's Negative Traits. Like yesterday's book, this should be in your library too. Also with yesterday, this helps you fill out your character and make them more well-rounded.

The Negative Trait Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Flaws by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi is another great book in the Thesaurus series. As the subtitle tells you, this book focuses on character flaws. Like the other books in the series, the book gives a lot of details around different flaws and common interactions and conflicts that result from those flaws. This book is very helpful for adding depth to characters you are writing. Another one to have in your library if you are interested in growing your writing skills.

The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: a Writer's Guide to Psychological Trauma by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi is another book in the Thesaurus series that helps writers round out their writing. This one is focused on traumatizing your characters and giving you all the dirt on what that causes. This gives you plenty of drama related to the trauma, what results from it, how to overcome it and the traits and behaviors a character would have when they suffer from it. Strongly recommended for authors that want to add depth to their characters.

The Occupation Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Jobs, Vocations, and Careers by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi is another book in the Thesaurus series of writing support books that gives you details on various occupations. Common traits, common skills, common conflicts they are involved in. A great resource for making a more well-rounded, less cliche characters. Definitely another one a writer should be keeping in their library.

This is a very addicting game. You play as long as you can survive, die and start over. What keeps you going is finding out the story, which is really quite interesting. The music is cool and the voice acting is top notch. Excellent game. I sunk a LOT of hours into it as a way to unwind after a long day of work. Pretty inexpensive too. And it's on all platforms, I think. worth checking out!

I figured I'd wrap up the current 3 movie timeline. (For the record, the money-losing disaster that was the start of the Hollywood crap show of the last few years "Ghostbusters 2016" is not part of canon at idiot director Paul Fool's insistence) This movie is kind of an apology from Sony for the above mentioned crap show. It has plenty of little fan thank yous. And the main plotline is actually a pretty touching tribute. Also of interesting note, they forced Bill Murray to appear in the 2016 crapshow by threatening to sue him... he appeared in this one because he wanted to. I think this movie is also the bookend of the 2016-2021 run of the "destroy and subvert everything that came before" with the 2016 crapshow Ghostbusters. I have no idea why huge companies by these popular franchises and they set up to piss off the fans and expect that attract more new ones? Good movie. A good example of how to not lecture your audience...

Ghostbusters II was not quite as good as Ghostbusters, but it was still an enjoyable movie. Well worth watching nonetheless. Funny. I love the ghost train and ghost titanic.

Truly a comedy/horror classic. I, of course, have the 4k movie. Definitely worth the entertainment factor.

This is one heck of a tome. Guy Sclanders has a wonderful YouTube Channel that goes into a lot of topics beyond his books as well. Aside from being a professional artist, game master and author, he's also on our team as a fellow gay creator. There are some really nice techniques described in this book about giving the bad guy goals and motivations. I think this can help us as writers as well, writing it down and when the muse causes us to deviate, the villain will have to adjust his plans too. Not to dissimilar to when Players deviate from a planned story from a game/dungeon master. Even if you aren't a gamer and are just writing a story, the ideas, concepts, motivations etc, help fill in the world and give the sense of purpose to those characters that would otherwise just be milling about.

Probably both...

Ultimate Guide to Alchemy, Crafting & Enchanting by Nord Games is one of the many Role Playing Game resources that I have in my library. I love world building. One of the keys to making a world functional for stories is to have the actions and reactions of the world follow rules. They may not be rules you tell your readers about. But if pulling the level makes the door open, then the doors should open when you pull the lever... or a surprise should occur. Books like this one, I use as inspiration for how to do world building. What do you think about? how do you quantify it? You don't need to go to the level that games do to make things work, of course. But having thought about it, it at least makes things consistent, which reduces reader's confusion, which increases reader's satisfaction. This particular book, is an interesting look into the creating of potions and magical artifacts. Very handy if you have a magic filled world. Or if you want to create that extra special McGuffin. Fun book, nice art.

The Urban Setting Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman & Becca Publisi is another book in their excellent series of Thesaurus books. This one, obviously, focuses on locations you'd find in an urban setting. Like the Rural version we covered yesterday, this one may not be used as often as some of the other books in the series. It is, however, an excellent resource to have in your library. Like the Rural book, this gives you ways to engage all the senses in different places. They also include some common conflicts you might encounter in these settings. Check it out!