This is a terrific book for the budding writer. Maass is a literary agent and has read many, many manuscripts in his career. So he knows what makes for a gripping story and what will put the reader to sleep. This book, using excerpts from many novels as examples, shows you how to develop meaningf...
I had read Donald Maass's previous book Writing the Breakout Novel and expected this to be more of the same. It took things in a new direction and to a new depth. In fact, the thrust of this is that the books that touch us do so by getting us to tap into something deep within us. It is the emotio...
I'm glad. Isn't it great when you hit one of those days, or even a whole stretch of your existence, when you just cruise along, no particular worries, everything going pretty well? How wonderful to be able to drop phrases like same-old, just routine, and nothing new. At times like those, problems...
That means that every protagonist has problems, because no goal is achieved without overcoming obstacles. (If a goal is easily achieved, then it isn't much of a goal, is it?) Those obstacles to a goal are important; indeed, they are the essence of plot. To put it another way, what is plot if not ...