Writing the Breakout Novel

Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: A multi-published friend of mine said that if you could take just one of Donald Maass' suggestions from this book and implement it, you'd have a much stronger story and a potential blockbuster. I couldn't agree more.

I bought Writing The Breakout Novel after hearing Mr. Maass speak at a national writers conference. I was impressed. As a New York Literary Agent who's written several books himself, Mr. Maass knows the publishing business, but more importantly, he knows and loves stories.

So, what about the book? Well, I read it cover to cover because I couldn't put it down. Now I'm going through it a second time, slowly, trying to assimilate it all -- an impossible task, because this book is full of information. After writing eleven books and reading hundreds of how-to books on writing, nothing much surprises me anymore. And I'll admit, occasionally, the advise in this book seemed obvious -- after someone put it in front of my face and hit me over the head with it. LOL!!

Will it have the same impact on a beginning writer as it did on me and the other multi-published authors I know? I'm not sure. Mr. Maass claims his book is for writers at all levels. So, maybe one of the newer writers out there could check it out and let us know.

Rating:
Summary: Good advice - read it if you're serious about a career
Review: Does this book teach you how to write novels and make John Grisham's millions in ten easy lessons? No. Does it have some really good advice for writers who have mastered the basics but still aren't selling? I found some - and I've read a gazillion writing books. Author Ken Follet wrote in the forward for his novel Paper Money - what he calls his "last unsuccessful book" -that after that book tanked he finally 'got it' - and went on to write The Eye of the Needle, probably his most famous book. Donald Maass discusses the errors that keep writers from 'getting it' - and with all the time and dedication writing takes, why would you pass up ANY good advice from a successful agent? I disagree with the complaint about the 'stakes' chapter - if anything, the author says the opposite, that the most important stakes are personal. (Think divorce - when its someone else's its a shame, when its yours we're talking nuclear devestation). Writers spend most of their free time with imaginary people, agents with real people - selling your imaginary people. Do yourself a favor, read both this book and the career novelist. (Unless of course, you just like pain and rejection!!!)

Rating:
Summary: Made a good story great
Review: For more than a year I've been wrestling with the details of the story I'm going to novelize, taking all the advice I could get, thinking and rethinking, redrafting. After this much work I had what I considered a good story.

After reading this book I decided to try applying its advice to the design of my story. I wanted to see how it would change the story, and if it brought out the spirit of the story better. I wanted to se if my story would entertain more by applying the book's tenants.

Using the book still required a great deal of creativity, hard work, and thinking through alternatives and refinements, but the results kicked the power of the story up to another level. I am more excited about this story than ever.

I think you need a deep well of talent and quite a bit more theory and knowledge besides what the book preaches to create a "break-out" novel. This book could help beginning authors provided they dip from many other sources and have a good mentor. I believe it would primarily aid authors that already have a background of theory, experience, and talent required for publication. Either way, it's worth having.

Like most good advice, much of it seems obvious. Still, without having the check-list in front of you, along with several examples, and going through the exercises of applying it to your story rigorously, your story may support the obvious only in obvious or weak ways. Going through the exercise forces you to apply this age-old wisdom in the most forceful possible way.

Those who say that this book encourages formulaic story-telling probably don't like the idea of any structure. Some structures, like a cage, inhibit, while others, like a ladder, provide more freedom. This book will force you to think through cob-webbed corners of your story. It will ask questions worth considering. The result is not formulaic, the result is a well-planned dramatic form projected onto a well-organized narrative. The exercise of re-thinking alone is worth it whether or not you accept the book's advice as gospel story truth.

There have only been a couple of other books about story and drama that I have found as useful as this one. Use these ingredients to achieve your break-out:

1. Get a mentor. Get two. Make sure that your mentor is either a published author of work you like or an agent/editor that reads through the slush-pile and critiques work constantly. This is the number one key to success.
2. Study drama. Read about theory. Analyze the greats. Think about the content (not the form, the clever prose and catchy language) of your story, and think about it hard. Revise it endlessly.
3. Get some readers. Naive readers that represent your audience, with no knowledge of dramatic theory or the craft of writing. Let them tell you where they lost interest, how they interpret your story, and how it made them feel and think.
4. Love what you're doing and have fun. Thrive on criticism but learn when to ignore it, that is, when it violates the spirit of your message.
5. Get this book and treat each suggestion as an exercise. It's worth the time and money to make take your story up a notch.

Rating:
Summary: The Essential Writer's Reference
Review: I do not know where my writing would be if I had not picked up this book at a bookstore...for even the brief skim that I give novels and reference at bookstores is enough to tell me if they are worth buying.

This is worth buying.

"Writing the Breakout Novel" is a tool for brainstorming stakes, theme, character development, genre, writing techniques, and more. There is more than enough advice to go around; if every writer in America- and, dare I say, the world- took one piece of advice from this book, literature as we know it would be 100% improved in every area- stakes, plot, theme, premise, characters, etc. Maass, as a novelist himself, knows of what he speaks, and his advice on writing- and marketing your novel, as well- is invaluable.

This reference receives my highest praise, and it is the one reference that a writer of any genre simply can not live without.

Rating:
Summary: So stunning you have to read in small bites, then breathe...
Review: I have two copies of this book. I intend to underline and trash out one copy and have the other copy handy for the motivation, the heart-swelling angst, that this book inspires, if you call inspiration a knife in the chest.

I am now looking back to my first manuscript and I can suddenly see terrible insufficiencies, inadequacies, and things that just plain old need fixing.

I have to warn you that this book makes you so motivated to write that you can't read. It has taken me days to get halfway through a book that should have taken hours to finish. I read a page or so, slam the book down on the table and FUME over my main character's total lack (or insufficiency) of whatever noble characteristic I now believe he needs in order to be sympathetic.

It's rough.

Fortunately, I now have some grand ideas for the second manuscript (one-fourth completed), and the third manuscript (plotted out, but not 'written'). That's a good thing, right?

Need inspiration? Need motivation? Aspire to write the best damn book possible? This book's what you want.

Want to get something written? Want to blurt and send? Consider an idiot's guide instead.


Rating:
Summary: Response to female author
Review: I have yet to read the book and am not endorsing it here. But "female author" made such a feeble comment that I felt compelled to respond. For her to discount a book because the writer has not written a breakout novel is absurd. If he is a successful agent then he is reading constantly, probably more novels than most writers could ever hope to cover in their lifetime. And that is why he probably knows what sells. And that's the topic of the book. "Female author" doesn't even use her name, but I'm sure she's probably a breakout author with many bestsellers to her credit. Maybe she will write one for all the rest of us goons to benefit from. Please!

Rating:
Summary: Maass's WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL Rocks!
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: advice on how to write a thriller
Review: Maass does go beyond the usual bland advice found in how-to-write books in that he tries to say which methods produce better results. He discusses "Premise", Stakes, Time and Place, Characters, Plot, "Contemporary Plot Techniques" ("nonlinear" narratives, character-driven stories), "Multiple Viewpoints, Subplots, Pace, Voice, Endings" (all in one chapter), "Advanced Plot Structures" (generational novels, whole life novels, historical novels, linked short stories), and Theme. His chapter on Stakes is particularly useful.
The problem I have with the book is the usual one: that the book assumes that every reader (and the would-be writer reading this book) has more or less the same tastes. Some of the books held up as exemplary novels to learn from, I found appalling.
Another problem is the occasional attempt to pander to the avant-garde. An example is "Nonlinear Narrative". There is no discussion/evaluation of this experimental technique. Nor is there any mention of how few readers there are for such material. But that's okay, because the matter is immediately dropped after two pages anyway, and it's back to the thrillers again.
Still, even when he's rehashing the same old ABCs, Maass does so in a lively way. So, beginning writers will certainly learn much from this book. And it is a valid point that Maass has not written a "breakout" novel himself, so how could this book tell us all we need to know to do it! It doesn't, but that does not mean that there isn't some useful information in the book.
No serious writer should read only one book on writing. The only protection from the author's tastes is to read a variety of books--not as easy as it sounds because most of them have the same tastes and most say the same things in different words and with different examples.

Rating:
Summary: A Breakout of its Own
Review: Most "how-to" books for writers offer at least some tidbits of useful information for the starving writer; Maass' Breakout Novel is a feast. This is a book about how structure, character, plot and theme work together to produce a compelling story. These quintessential elements of storytelling are hard to learn and hard to teach. Thankfully, Maass' writing is lively and his lessons cleverly and memorably illustrated. You'll find yourself muttering again and again "right!" "of course!" and "I get it!" so read this book with pen in hand. I'll bet this month's royalty check you'll be underlining and turning down page corners in no time. That said, you may not need to come back to it often. What you learn from a first reading is likely to stay with you and influence your storytelling for a long time to come.

Rating:
Summary: Give me a break!
Review: Oh, please. If Donald Maass knows how to write a breakout novel, then how come he hasn't written one? The backcover of this book mentions that Maass is not only an agent, but "the author of 17 novels." Yet none of them are listed either on BN.com or Amazon.com. They must have been huge bestsellers, huh? Sorry Mr. Maas, but if you haven't written a single novel that's been successful, then you shouldn't be giving people advice on how to do this. It's like JLo or Donald Trump advising people on how to have the perfect marriage. Seriously.