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Title: Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass ISBN: 1-58297-182-X Publisher: Writers Digest Books Pub. Date: August, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.27 (26 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Ten and the rocket to get there
Comment: Okay -- I'm tearing through this book like a lunatic and revising my current novel, VINCALIS THE AGITATOR (due from Warner-Aspect in March of 2002), simultaneously, and I cannot even begin to tell you how much I've learned.
I've cut chunks from VINCALIS, added new scenes, removed unnecessary characters, combined minor characters to create fewer but more important characters, added tension and conflict to EVERY page and EVERY scene, found dozens of ways to add new depth and resonance . . . the list goes on and on and on.
VINCALIS is bleeding, but bleeding good. Writing the Breakout Novel is not a book on how to create a formulaic bestseller -- it is a book on how to create the book you want to write, and make THAT book fly off the shelves. It is an absolute essential, as vital to the serious novelist as Maass's other writing book, The Career Novelist.
Writing the Breakout Novel, by Donald Maass. If I did stars, I'd give this one ten plus the rocket to get there.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Truth, simply put
Comment: If I could, I would give this book ten stars. I am in the midst of writing my first novel, (truth be told I've started 1,000), and I am reading this book simultaneously. I read "On Writing" by Stephen King, and that has some great advice, "Don't use adverbs" and "Kill your darlings" to name a few tenets. However, in reading "Writing the Breakout Novel" I found myself questioning the plot I'm working on, questioning my characters, and with about 5 minutes of thought, bringing something to my book that makes it 200,000% better. Even though I feel like I've got an interesting story, Maass's advice helped me to make it matter. I've found myself rooting for my characters, adding dimension, changing some outcome. All in all, I feel like Maass and Stephen King are standing over my shoulders going, "What about this? and that?" King's book inspired me, Maass's book challenges me. Unlike the plots that I've tried before, this one grips me, keeps me writing. If I get stuck, Maass helps me through it. Unlike some instructional writers, Maass injects passages from successful authors and books to illustrate his point. The reader can easily decipher what he means, and see it in a variety of writing styles. Maass is telling the truth, and the truth will revolutionize your writing.
Rating: 5
Summary: Maass's WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL Rocks!
Comment: If you're a writer - and by this I mean a novelist writing to get or stay published - you'll want to latch onto Donald Maass's Writing the Breakout Novel, and keep it close to your keyboard, your notepad, your bedside, wherever you do your pondering, plotting and, ultimately, your writing. Why? Because it's that good.
Writing the Breakout Novel is more than just a how-to book. It's a how *you* can do it book. Its nuggets of wisdom aren't couched in some complex paradigm for successful writing. Rather, it's a work of guiding a writer to harvesting the gut-most potential he or she possesses. It's a crisp, deep dive into the waters of a writer's truest desires.
What do you really want to say in your novel? What is it that grabs you and won't let go? Put simply, why the heck are you writing your present work-in-progress at all? Read Maass's book, and you're going to decide the answers to these questions. Better still, you'll have a clearer idea of how to pour all of that passion onto the page in a cohesive, tension-building, and ultimately satisfying story.
Maass gives you, the writer, the driver's seat as he explains - with examples and thought-provoking questions - the techniques that make a novel more than just another book on the shelves. Writing the Breakout Novel is all about writing a novel that catches fire, and where Maass wildly succeeds is lighting a fire under and within a writer.
In chapters devoted to such topics as Premise, Stakes, Characters and Theme, Maass lays out and links up ingredients that - when put together and given resonance in every scene - pluck hard at the chord of humanity.
Maass gives you not only the permission but also the ultimate responsibility of creating a crescendo with each word you write. No doubt about it, this is powerful stuff. But with Maass's masterful guidance of picking apart the story you want to deliver, the writer in you will float up and out and meet with assurance all the passionate promise you'd first intended for your work.
Is what he lays out easy? No. Is it simple? Not even. What he proposes is hard, sweaty work. It's wringing every truth out of your soul - and most especially your precious protagonist - and then ratcheting everything up about a hundred degrees. It's putting your character slam-bang-boom into the most uncomfortable position you can imagine...and then yanking out from beneath them whatever thin safety net might still exist.
On the day I bought Maass's book, I listened as he gave a keynote address at a writing conference. He talked of daring to push the envelope within the confines of a genre, of finding new variations. "Break the rules with panache," he said. "Plan not to accept the first and obvious plot choice as being the best. Be free. Be jazzy. See where it takes you. Plan to be different. Plan to try new things. Decide what is the moment of no turning back for your main character. Now imagine this paragraph as the opening of your novel...and then imagine *every* paragraph as having this passion and emotion."
Writing the Breakout Novel helps a writer do exactly that.
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Title: The Career Novelist : A Literary Agent Offers Strategies for Success by Donald Maass ISBN: 0435086936 Publisher: Heinemann Publishing Pub. Date: 01 July, 1996 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile by Noah Lukeman ISBN: 068485743X Publisher: Fireside Pub. Date: 20 January, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing: A 16-Step Program Guaranteed to Take You from Idea to Completed Manuscript by Evan Marshall ISBN: 1582970629 Publisher: Writers Digest Books Pub. Date: March, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.99 |
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Title: Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne, Dave King ISBN: 0062720465 Publisher: HarperResource Pub. Date: 16 February, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: How to Write a Damn Good Novel : A Step-by-Step No Nonsense Guide to Dramatic Storytelling by James N. Frey ISBN: 0312010443 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 15 December, 1987 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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