What I learned from Donald Maass

Writing the breakout Novel was by far the most thought provoking book about novel writing I’ve read. The questions is it draws you to ask about your stories will help develop not only your stories but your view and style of writing. The examples provided were excellent and some have even made their way to my fall reading list.

Though Maass doesn’t offer an outline or formula for writing the break out novel, he does cover every property of a breakout from Premise to theme, larger than life characters to settings, plot and more. It’s definitely a book that you should keep near, I’ve referred to it numerous times in reformulating my scenes and chapters. I have such a better understanding of the properties of a published novel and what was missing in my own.

I’ve decided to follow up my reading with Fire in the Fiction also by Donald Maass and The How to Write a Breakout Novel workbook.