Fire In Fiction: Passion, Purpose And Techniques To Make Your Novel Great (2009) - Plot & Excerpts
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 meaningful protagonist, use scene setting effectively, convey emotion and develop a voice.Perhaps the best chapter in the book is Chapter 8 on what he calls micro-tension. How to create tension and maintain it in your story. One of the unexpected bonuses to the book is that, through the examples he used, he introduced me to many writers and books I had not heard of before and who I now want to go out and read. The Fire in Fiction offers a good amount of knowledge on improving one's writing from the perspective of a literary agent. The book covers 9 chapters: Protagonists vs. HeroesCharacters Who MatterScenes That Can't Be CutThe World of the NovelA Singular VoiceMaking the Impossible RealHyperrealityTension All the TimeThe Fire in Fiction Maass provides plenty of examples from bestselling authors to support his points. Most of the advice in here isn't necessarily a "how to write", but larger ideas to apply to your own fiction writing. Maass provides Practical Tools Exercises after each chapter to work on and summarize the main points. This isn't the best writing book I've read, but it's worth checking out. And if there's only one take away I learned from this book it's to have something to say that is unique to you when you write.
What do You think about Fire In Fiction: Passion, Purpose And Techniques To Make Your Novel Great (2009)?
Good advice and insight. Will definitely read this again.
—Cindy
Great book! a must have for writer's libraryl
—tanhotma
