Donald Maass is president of Donald Maass Literary Agency of New York City. His agency specializes in fiction of all genres.
Nine Take-away’s from Donald Maass’ PNWA 2012 presentation:
- Think writing tools, not rules.
- Emotions are what connect us to the characters of a novel. What engages your heart will engage your reader.
- Create interiority. Create an emotional landscape that the characters travel through–your story’s interiority.
- Reveal yourself through your fiction by writing from a personal place, a place of passion, a place of experience, a place that matters. Give these emotions and motivations to your characters.
- Genre categories have become a palette from which writers may draw from to create unique hybrids. Great fiction will not be bound by conventions.
- Surprise your readers. Don’t just write about the emotions that they expect. Think about the strongest emotions that you have experienced and then think about the underlying ones, the subtle ones. Write about those emotions instead of what the reader would expect from the scene/plot. Again, surprize your readers.
- Write your stories like they matter, and they will matter. Powerful fiction comes from a very personal place.
- Readers read to make sense of the world.Your reader wants some kind of insight into the antagonist. Who looks up to your antagonist? What does he have to gain? To lose? Why must he reach his goals? How much will he lose to meet his goal? What will he gain? Help your reader view life through the villain’s motivations and perspective. Make your antagonist multi-dimensional.
- Beautiful Writing + Commercial Writing (page turners) = High Impact Writing.
Check out Donald Maass’ blog: “Writer Unboxed” at http://writerunboxed.com/don/ for more great writing tips.
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