Writing fiction is a difficult art. Writing fiction that sells and impacts is even more difficult. Literary agent Donald Maass seeks to educate writers how to write meaningful fiction with meaningful characters. The key, he says, is to develop characters’ emotional layer so that they become more dynamic. Thus, readers identify with characters and want to spend time in your book. The key to developing characters is, as an author, to develop one’s own emotional and spiritual layer as a writer and a human being. He writes this book to show us how.
Many of us are scared to grow self-aware and more secure in keeping up a false front that we are self-sufficient. Being a writer, however, means being willing to delve beneath the surface and expose one’s own vulnerabilities so that characters’ vulnerabilities can be likewise exposed. Maass shows how to put those feelings on the page in impactful fiction. He analyzes numerous examples of how that was accomplished in successful fiction.
Maass has taught the art of writing fiction in classes, and his teacher’s voice shows throughout in this book. Its direct audience consists of fiction writers in their early career. I’m not one of those, honestly, but I want to improve my ability to write non-fiction that connects with readers. Therefore, this book cross-trained me a bit to think in new ways. Writing doesn’t have to be a chore when pouring one’s soul into the page and growing more self-aware while writing. That’s a high aspiration, but Maass shows how to accomplish it a bit more.
The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface
By Donal Maass
Narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon
Audio copyright (c) 2020
Tantor Audio
Text copyright (c) 2016
Writer’s Digest Books
ASIN B086M96GZW
Length: 7:36
Genre: Writing
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