Writing the Breakout Novel

"Writing the Breakout Novel" summary
submitted by Tom Cannon

Donald Maass of the Donald Maass Literary Agency taught a workshop this weekend at the 18th Annual Writer’s Institute in Madison. His goal was to teach attendees how to write a breakout novel--a novel that propels an author to be a leader in the industry. His presentation was interactive, entertaining, and powerful. He described how nothing is more important to selling books than word-of-mouth and that this comes from providing a powerful story. As he autographed in his books, “Tension on every page.”

But how do you do this? Mr. Maass put the audience through exercises that taught strategies such as: add heroic qualities right away, build inner conflict, add quirks, and raise the stakes for the characters. All of these and many more skills are explored further in his book "Writing the Breakout Novel," and his workbook of the same name.

Mr. Mass leads weeklong workshops on writing and is leading one the third week of June Nashville, Indiana (information can be found at http://www.free-expressions.com/). If you are looking for a weeklong workshop, this writer would recommend one of Mr. Maas’. It sounds like a lot of work with workshops, 1:1 meetings, evening programs, and homework, but it also sounds like a tool to take your writing to the next level.

However, you may want to be prepared that Mr. Maass will be honest. He was polite and positive, but did not shy away from being honest. One of his suggestions to improve writers groups was to ask the people to critique your work and identify any passages where they did not feel tension. That would be hard to listen to, but it is tension that makes people turn the page.