Writing the Breakout Novel [Paperback]

Maass offers interesting insights into character development, plot, style, and theme as well as how these elements fit together to make a story entertaining. Reading this work, I found interesting and useful insights on every page. If you have been looking over a manuscript, wondering what it is lacking, this book will almost certainly provoke some new ideas. For that reason alone, it is well worth reading.

Yup: it's all here. This book should be subtitled "How To Craft Cliche, Cartoon Concoctions That Give The Novel A Bad Name."

Mr. Maass is one of those "Writer's Digest" acolytes who prey on the aspiring writer, and judging by the 5-star reviews for his book, he's found his audience. Which is really too bad. He's helping train a new generation of formulaic tinkerers who will write shallow nonsense that really belongs on TV.

The book is a wonderful case study on why publishing (of fiction, at any rate) is dying. "I am looking for authors with a distinctive voice," Mr Maass quotes editors as saying. Nonsense. They're looking for the tried and true and trite on the one hand (Patterson, Grisham, Sparks) . . . or the obscure and pretentious and muddled on the other (DeLillo, Pynchon, Franzen).

Your "breakout" novel will come when you line up all the hot buttons a particular publishing category demands (mystery, adventure, romance -- they each have different formulae) and earnestly press them, one by one. This, Mr. Maass says, will create the word of mouth that will have people lining up to buy your book. "Oooh, it's as dumb as a Patterson? Wow!" "Oooh, does she die young, like in a Sparks book? Gosh!"

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.