Donald Maass Quotes & Sayings

What is actually happening inside readers as they read? Each reader has a unique emotional response to a story. It's unpredictable, but it's real. Readers read under the influence of their own temperaments, histories, biases, morality, likes, dislikes, and peeves. They make judgments that don't agree with yours. So how can a writer predict, never mind control, what readers feel? Psychological — Donald Maass

The next biggest reason folks buy fiction is that it has been personally recommended to them by a friend, family member or bookstore employee. That process is called word of mouth. Savvy publishers understand its power and try to facilitate its effect with advance reading copies (ARCs), samplers, first chapters circulated by e-mail, Web sites and the like. — Donald Maass

In short, a premise is any single image, moment, feeling, or belief that has enough power and personal meaning for the author to set her story on fire, and propel it like a rocket for hundreds of pages. — Donald Maass

To infuse a novel with a significance that speaks to many requires, paradoxically, that you ignore what the public wants and focus instead on what matters to you. — Donald Maass

When a hot trend turns into a sub-category, new strictures arise along with it. Tropes turn into shortcuts, character paradigms become cardboard cutouts. Publishing pulls the bandwagon, true enough, but when feel-alike fiction floods the market its impact declines because it is starved of what makes fiction rich, surprising, moving, and masterful. — Donald Maass

His characters may be cardboard, but each has a clear, uncomplicated purpose. Every moment of the story contributes to building conflict. — Donald Maass

What makes them classics? Artful storytelling, sure, but beyond the storytelling, classics have enduring appeal mostly because we remember the experiences we had while reading them; we remember not the art but the impact. When — Donald Maass

Dive from a high platform, walk a country lane, watch your computer freeze, cross a finish line, hear your morning alarm, look for a parking space, toast on your anniversary, embrace a friend after a funeral. As you live your life, what do you feel? Terror, serenity, frustration, relief, groaning reluctance, patient endurance, pride, satisfaction, or a grief made bearable because somehow life will go on. We experience life as feelings. — Donald Maass

Do not keep secrets - except in your fiction, where their corrosive influence and dark gravity make for high drama. — Donald Maass

Who your characters are, how they behave, what they believe, how they think, what they do, and the ways in which they feel are in your control. Why create characters who only raise shrugs? In — Donald Maass

A work of fiction grips our imaginations because we care, both about the characters in the tale and about ourselves. To put it another way, we are concerned about the outcome of the story because what is happening to the characters could happen to us. — Donald Maass

High-impact 21st century fiction is built on unique voices, uncommon characters, and tales that can only be told by a particular author. They're sui generis. — Donald Maass

Positive means feeling enjoyment, suspense, amusement, and the satisfaction of what psychologists call belief affirmation - stories turning out as readers believe they should. That requires more than just a happy ending. It means affirming readers' beliefs and validating their morals. — Donald Maass

What all that means is that readers fundamentally want to feel something, not about your story, but about themselves. They want to play. They want to anticipate, guess, think, and judge. They want to finish a story and feel competent. They want to feel like they've been through something. They want to connect with your characters and live their fictional experience, or believe that they have. Creating — Donald Maass

Beautiful writing is more than pretty prose. It creates resonance in readers' minds with parallels, reversals, and symbols. It conjures a story world that is unique, highly detailed, and brought alive by the characters that dwell there. It offers moments of breath-catching surprise, heart-gripping insight, revelation, and self-understanding. It engages the reader's mind with an urgent point, which we might call theme. — Donald Maass

The fact is that roughly two-thirds of all fiction purchases are made because the consumer is already familiar with the author. — Donald Maass

How many novels have moved you to tears, rage, and a resolution to live differently? — Donald Maass

Do it. Go there. Take it away, permanently. Deliver the fear. Force the task. Remove all hope. Demand the sacrifice. Enact defeat. Wreck everything. Great endings are built of great climaxes: enormous feats, worst fears, tremendous losses, harrowing sacrifices, utter destruction. — Donald Maass

Let's talk about me!" Generally speaking, that's not a great idea for handling yourself in social situations. A better plan is to listen and ask questions. Being interested in others is the way to make friends and influence people. In bonding readers to characters on the page, however, the reverse is true. We open our hearts to those whose hearts are first open to us. For — Donald Maass

Why is it important to look at fiction writing through the lens of emotional experience? Because that's the way readers read. They don't so much read as respond. They do not automatically adopt your outlook and outrage. They formulate their own. You are not the author of what readers feel, just the provocateur of those feelings. You may curate your characters' experiences and put them on display, but the exhibit's meaning is different in thousands of ways for thousands of different museum visitors, your readers. Not — Donald Maass

That said, nothing builds reader involvement more surely than a character whose moral struggle pervades the tale. When readers hope, beg, and plead with you to let a character turn toward the light, you have readers where you want them. A character who is good is good; a character — Donald Maass

For me, where genre ends and literature begins doesn't matter. What matters is whether a given novel hits me with high impact. If it does, it probably is fulfilling the purpose of fiction. It has drawn me into a story world, held me captive, taken me on a journey with characters like none I've ever met, revealed truths I've somehow always known and insights that rock my brain. It's filled me with awe, which is to say it's made me see the familiar in a wholly new way and made the unfamiliar a foundational part of me. It both entertains and matters. It both captures our age and becomes timelessly great. It does all that with the sturdy tools of story and the flair of narrative art. — Donald Maass

It takes courage to violate expectations, but sometimes the reward is a new level of success. — Donald Maass

How many have left a permanent mark, branding you with a story that you will never forget? — Donald Maass

Here's a writing craft tool that you can remove from your toolbox and throw away: description. It's the stuff that most readers skim. Even when deftly done using the five senses it's a lead weight. It isn't needed anymore. — Donald Maass