The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

by Donald Maass

Engage Your Readers with Emotion

While writers might disagree over showing versus telling or plotting versus pantsing, none would argue this: If you want to write strong fiction, you must make your readers feel. The reader's experience must be an emotional journey of its own, one as involving as your characters' struggles, discoveries, and triumphs are for you.

That's where The Emotional Craft of Fiction comes in. Veteran literary agent and expert fiction instructor Donald Maass shows you how to use story to provoke a visceral and emotional experience in readers. Topics covered include: emotional modes of writing beyond showing versus telling your story's emotional world moral stakes connecting the inner and outer journeys plot as emotional opportunities invoking higher emotions, symbols, and emotional language cascading change story as emotional mirror positive spirit and magnanimous writing the hidden current that makes stories move Readers can simply read a novel...or they can experience it. The Emotional Craft of Fiction shows you how to make that happen.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Crafts, Reference, Audiobook, Research, How To

226 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 30, 2016

About the author

Donald Maass is the author of more than 16 novels. He now works as a literary agent, representing dozens of novelists in the SF, fantasy, crime, mystery, romance and thriller categories. He speaks at writer's conferences throughout the country and lives in New York City.

Reviews

[K.M. Weiland · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I'd written this book myself if only so I could share every single chapter with my own readers. Because it's brilliant. More than just on-point writing instruction, this is an inspirational challenge calling all writers to be their best selves and write stories that, in turn, inspire and challenge readers in all the best ways. I wasn't expecting that from this book, but I was certainly inspired and challenged myself. Read it!

[zerogravitas · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's useless, patronizing, sexist, and simply comes at things from the wrong angle. Opens with a big essay trying to sell the readers into wanting to become apt at writing emotion, which is needless since readers already came to the book because they were sold into the idea to begin with. Then offers justification as to why the author wrote this book after having written a few others before. Dude, I don't care about your reasons to write it, this isn't a memoir. Just get on with the technical stuff.

What technical stuff? Cause there isn't much. The examples given are bad. Instead of picking paragraphs where the craft can be analytically broken down into 'this word here creates resonance, that word there is showing, the other word there is used for evocative telling', the examples rely on the (informed) ability of the book in question to create emotion through larger techniques that aren't captured on page here, like character investment. Well if I need to be invested in the characters in order to even understand that the excerpt examples are evoking an emotion, then a) the examples are bad and b) let's talk about creating investment into characters instead. Otherwise it's just a case of trying to capture the black cat in the dark room with the cat not being present.

Also the book comes across as preachy and engaging in self-ass kissing. Like let's face it, there's only value in literary writing. If there's no melodrama of a middle-aged English professor contemplating adultery (which so often comes from big literary cheeses writing what they know), there's no value to the book because it doesn't engage in exploring the important stuff, like human experience. If I want human experience, I'll give up on my internet banking and go queue to pay the bills once more. Also characters must be moral in order to capture the audience, cause we never heard of Walter White. I didn't even watch that series and I heard of him. QED. Characters don't need to be moral, they need to be interesting. Also, is sexism moral? And is someone sexist entitled to preaching about ethics? Am I being too literary here, cause I think I'm being too literary with exploring this ethics/sexism dichotomy.

Fun note about the sexist stuff. I'm from Europe and we don't have it here cause we're leftist commies like that. (Well very occasionally we have it but it's nowhere nearly as institutionalized or offensive as where this guy is from, being mostly limited to being polite in the company of ladies and opening doors, and my country is a special example where even toxic masculinity is almost absent). Not being sensitized to it through repeated exposure (except for the door opening which is very nice, let there be door opening), I don't notice it that easily but in this book it's really evident. In the opening essay, the one that should've been cut in editing, this guy's saying that women's prose and romance is "wallowing" in emotion. He could've used a neutral way to say the same thing, given how he's a writer and all, e.g. women's prose and romance are too emotion-centric. But nah, wallowing is a women's thing, they all wallow. I actually know what he means to say, there are lots of women's books out there that are pure wish fulfillment and smut, but then there are others that aren't, so stereotyping all women's prose and romance like that is stupid and lazy. Like, Jane Austen is romance. This is a book on writing and its whole purpose is to break the field into cases and discuss each case separately so that readers can learn from it. But nah, it's better to bank on your fame, issue platitudes, and write about your motivations for writing the book.

[Jon Ureña · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three and a half stars.

I got dozens of notes out of it, as usual, but this one didn't do it for me. Maybe the weakest of his that I've read. It irked me how dogmatic he was about what people want out of reading fiction, as part of the stated belief that pretty much every human being has an essentially compatible set of beliefs, which seems to me extraordinarily naïve.

He suggests not going to very dark places with your protagonists, because people don't want to read about characters in very perturbed states of mind. I think it's just a matter of identification; I don't connect with characters that have their cozy Brooklyn home where they live with their family and go to hockey games and stuff like that, which is what the author shared about his life. Daily I feel threatened by sensorial information itself, I have to waddle through mental and physical pain and I try to stay coherent in the middle of strong compulsions, so when I read fiction I seek characters who start in deep shit even before the plot hits them. They change, but they rarely, if ever, change into the kind of virtuous individual that Maass assumes as universal. Sometimes they change for the worse, even by their own standards.

I haven't had similar issues with other books on writing, maybe because they focused more on the technical aspects of plotting, on what has worked before, and when they delved into what most people might possibly want, they had some neuroscience to back it up (like Lisa Cron's "Wired for Story").

[Vaughn Roycroft · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the things I love about Donald Maass’s craft books is that he keeps taking it up a notch, keeps pushing boundaries. Which in turn continues to challenge his pupils. Although I firmly believe this book will help any writer who reads it, I feel like it found its way to my hands at the perfect point in my writing journey. It takes the craft of fiction beyond the basic mechanics of characterization and plot construction, and so I would advise brand new writers to perhaps start with Maass’s earlier offerings, and work their way to this one.

As a carpenter, I liken it to someone having a sound competency with power tools and construction techniques being offered a set of fine woodworking tools, along with revealing lessons on intricate joinery and working with the grain and density of various substrates.

I’ve known for some time that I want more for my stories than to simply entertain, or to keep the pages turning for readers. I want to achieve resonance. As Maass says in the early going of this book: “…[R]eaders 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.”

As a reader, that’s what I want. And so, as a writer I aspire to creating stories that offer that kind of connection, and thereby, that kind of experience I seek as a reader. Thanks to Donald Maass, we all have access to the tools and techniques to practice as we strive toward emotional mastery in storytelling. This is a book I will read more than once, and reference again and again.

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship]

This is a provocative writing book. As always with these sorts of books, I think the best reaction is probably to take with you what’s useful and leave behind the rest after having given some consideration to it - if you're going to do something that's not generally advised, you want to be doing it deliberately, not thoughtlessly. And I think there’s a fair amount in here worthy of consideration, though it’s also sometimes less helpful than it could be, particularly when Maass devotes large portions of sections to quoting passages that worked for him, usually preceded with overly long explanations of what the book in question is about even when it’s not actually relevant to understanding the passage.

Now there are certainly some good insights and tips in here. For instance, on how to make character emotions effective for a reader (usually by writing around them in one way or another). There are also some insights and tips that I’m glad most writers don’t use. Maass points out, for instance, that the fictional characters you love most are probably in some way better and more admirable than the average person. And this is true for me. But at the same time, I don’t expect or even really want to fall in love with every book, but a large part of what I do want from fiction is a window into lives different from my own. I don’t want every protagonist to be a hero or every book to be about the triumph of the human spirit, or whatever other inflated universalizing language blurb-writers love to use. That’s exhausting and at a certain point I think it’s alienating. I like to read about real, flawed people (though Maass is right that for us to care, their everyday lives need to be rich with meaning). So, is writing about extraordinary, inspiring people a good idea for the individual author? Maybe. But please, don’t all do it at once!

Relatedly, Maass pushes back here against the idea that everything in a book needs to be action, no contemplation, and conflict, no harmony. Again, correctly in my reading experience, he points out that the books we love the most tend to be the ones where there is some warmth and emotional connectedness. I think he’s right that it’s rare to see this overdone, and more common to see bleak settings where strangers are hostile, friends useless and generic, families toxic, and protagonists isolated (though I would add: except for their love interest. Perhaps much of this is a clumsy way of isolating protagonists to make sure their romances are meaningful?). One of his more solid tips is to include in the opening not just a plot hook, but an emotional one: why should readers connect with this protagonist? (Because they care about a family member is a good suggested answer.) I find it a little odd that he discusses this whole topic almost in a vacuum though, without addressing the obvious question of how to square it with all that advice about every line consisting of conflict and action.

A couple of criticisms I saw before reading the book were about the author’s preference for classic literature, and a couple of weird gendered comments. Maybe it was because seeing these criticisms more than once made me expect worse, but I didn’t think either of these was much of a problem. Maass may connect most with classics, but his examples come from an admirable range of genres and represent both genders. The weirdest bit was his references to “women’s fiction,” which made me think he just calls all contemporary fiction by and about women that doesn’t fall into some other genre label “women’s fiction” (by which standard, of course, most of our celebrated male authors ought to be known as authors of “men’s fiction”). However, that’s a minor point in the scheme of the book.

There’s also the valid criticism that the author advises pulling back from very dark character emotions, this evidently being a place he doesn’t want to go. I would put this in the “take it if it helps, leave it if it doesn’t” bucket – I can maybe see where he’s coming from in that big enough emotions can take over the page through action alone without needing a lot of interior description, but I also didn’t find the passage he quoted as a good example of this to be emotionally effective. Instead it came across as weird and distancing.

At any rate, there’s plenty to dig into here and Maass offers a lot of concrete tips and exercises for writers, which will no doubt be useful in taking your fiction to the next level. I wouldn’t take it as gospel, but the same should probably be said for every how-to-write book.

[Gillian Pierce · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have read a lot of books on craft, from both a prose and screenwriting standpoint, have taken Masterclass.com (all the writers except for Joyce Carol Oats, who is a new addition) and done about 30% of tutorials on WD. I study hard. But this book on craft is one of my least favorite of all time. I will give you this reason up front, then provide a few more that are less visceral to me.
1. My biggest complaint is that there is a BLATANT and TRIGGERING example of CHILD SEX ABUSE – a text excerpt of epically immoral, unethical, illegal and disgusting detail. Literally a child sex worker, victimized by a ring, is referred to as a literary excerpt, wherein the protagonist is a SEX purchaser. It has haunted me for days on 2 levels.
a. One: Zero warning. Graphic detail. Haunting, disgusting, immoral, and vomit inducing.
b. Two: A resounding endorsement from Maass that this “scene” is masterful because the protagonist, who is a purchasing the child sex services – (God it breaks my heart to type this) even he has limits to how a child sex slave is treated and kept. WTF???? One what fucking level is this ever acceptable? (No: writing about it does not improve society or bring “awareness.”) Two thumbs down for you using this example – at all.
Who edited this material? Or is just like a self-published self-help? Seriously – it’s hard to say anything good about this book because of this one passage. OK. Maybe I’m triggered. But I say it again – WTF????
Here are my other reasons for disliking this book.
2. I found most of the exercises unusable. But I will say that I am always, ALWAYS, highly skeptical of any authority who is an expert, but has never actually written anything other than literary criticisms. I know, he’s an agent, but he STILL hasn’t written a work of fiction. Not one. So how is he an expert on the HOW to execute? How does someone who has never written any fiction all of a sudden have insight into how the DOERS do it? (If this doesn’t resonate with you, please take your car for an oil change at a diner. Or get the steward to fly the plane; they watch the pilots do it all the time.) If anyone uses any of these process, I would love to hear how this has helped you, rather than just being esoteric talking points at an author cocktail party.
3. If you like to read extensively, and have not read some of his examples, and dislike spoilers, you’d be in for a frustrating read. (No warnings are provided, but I can understand why the author needs to provide specifics. Here’s a solution: a preface with which novels are discussed so we can read them first?)
4. He doesn’t distinguish examples in first person, close third, omnipotent – so the material maybe elucidating for you, depending on what your preference.
5. He doesn’t distinguish examples by genre. If you write romance or women’s fiction, I suspect this book would be unusable.
6. As another Goodreads user noted, there is a lot of “snobbery” biases against both women’s fiction which he says “drowns in emotion” but doesn’t touch him; classics and literary are better than the selling “first person narrative” of today. (What am supposed to DO with that tidbit? Use his techniques and hope my work will be posthumously designated a classic?)
7. As well, the other Goodreads user noted and I agree that there are “misogynistic and otherwise patronizing statements” which convey his preferences and opinion, but do little to objectively show craft.

[Liz Fenwick · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is so much in this short book. It is a book to revise a manuscript with, to take you through those scenes that are necessary but aren't working, to force you deeper in the story...to go beyond your own fear as a writer. I need to reread and reread it repeatedly.

[Renee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a helpful book! Great suggestions. Now I just have to put them into practice.

[Emily Ver Steeg · Rating 1 out of 5]

I only got 50 pages in and I couldn’t bring myself to read any further. Not only is this book not well-written, it also doesn’t contribute anything new to the craft of writing fiction. The advice is so general and common-knowledge, that the author almost doesn’t SAY anything. And when he does say things, they’re almost laughably misleading. For example, he insists that characters should have redeeming qualities for readers to have an emotional attachment to the story—that characters should contribute to the “moral elevation” of readers. Perhaps he meant to say that characters should be human or relatable. But he didn’t. He used words like “good” and “moral.” Characters don’t have to have redeeming or moral qualities in order for readers to be invested in them or their stories. Take David Lynch films for example. All that to say, I was incredibly disappointed. I’m not even that experienced of a writer, and I was shocked at how shallow and pedantic the first 50 pages of this book were.

[buwan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel kinda mixed on this book. Lemme preface by saying I love listening to writing analysis, the craft of writing, and deep-diving into what makes a good story. I was thrilled at the idea of an entire book dedicated to talking about the emotions behind fiction because this topic is so complex and one of my favorite parts of literature. I also knew nothing about Maass or his books, and had no expectations, positive or negative, save for my own excitement over a subject I really enjoy learning about. That said, I feel like the things he points out have merit to them, but I could not bring myself to enjoy this book. I listened to this via audiobook and I had to bump up the speed quite a bit to get through it because I hate leaving a book on DNF, despite how much I really wanted to with this one.

1.) The references the author uses are very dated and not very relatable to a younger audience (young millennials and gen z). Most of the books he references were books I was forced to read in high school and definitely wouldn't read for pleasure. Objectively speaking, the advice he gives isn't useless, it is one of many perspectives, and the work he references are things that he connected with and worked for him and that's great. If you can get past the fact that he really (really) likes classic literature then his analysis and advice could still give you something to chew on.

2.) The book has very blanket statements about emotions readers feel about stories. I don't think the author intends to kinda throw everyone into a single basket but that's what ended up happening. The author would cite an entire passage of an outdated story, I feel absolutely nothing about it, and then the next passage is the author talking about how much emotion that passage evokes. If I enjoyed the books he was referencing I might feel differently, but this doesn't exactly make me feel confident in the advice I would receive immediately after.

3.) The parts cited from other stories could be really jarring to just hear dropped on you mid-sentence. For example, there is a passage cited where the n-word (hard r) is dropped with absolutely no censorship which was a little brow raising. It's part of the citation, I know, but nonetheless, it gave me pause that there was no redaction considering the author is a white man. In a section discussing the emotional nuances around "the bad guy," there is a passage from another work that describes in vivid detail the forced prostitution of a young boy (and alludes to his mutilation) and subsequent rape by an old man soliciting sex from him. The man sees that all of the boy's teeth have been pulled out so that he is easier to sell, and the old man gives him money (for dentures, I'm assuming). Granted, there is a warning before this passage, but since I was listening to an audiobook it's difficult to skip ahead without unknowingly missing chunks of the point being made. Not to mention, right after this scene is described, the author basically says, "Wow that was really gross huh? But he gave him money and isn't that also kinda beautiful?" Uhhhh??? I guess this fit the bill of what he was trying to point out but I was definitely not prepared for the amount of detail and the source he chose for this point.

4.) The author's voice makes it very obvious that he is an older white man. Small things that younger people would consider ignorant but elders consider rather liberal or normal, like saying "women's fiction" instead of contemporary, or "crossdresser" instead of homosexual. There are also small gendered things he says, like in an anecdote about his family dynamic where he admits to throwing the temper tantrums that dads are known for, or a time he felt like he had failed as a father because he "was Dad" and needed to fix everything. Both times, his wife ends up basically saving the day. He passes this off as "dad things" and doesn't talk much on them, which granted is neither here nor there in terms of the book's subject, but imo it gave me a bad toxic masculine taste in my mouth and added on to the feeling that I just wanted the book to end.

Another is the general disconnect you feel as a younger listener/reader when he brings up YA or new adult fiction that was bigger some years ago, like Twilight (2005) or The Hunger Games (2008). This book was published in 2016, so there were a lot more relevant novels he could've referenced for the younger audience that probably would've made more sense (especially considering he used Bella Swan as an example of an exquisite display of teen emotion, which tells me he has probably never spoken to a teenager who was in the full throes of the Twilight craze back in 2008). In the grand scheme of the book, this isn't a major point, but it ended up feeling like it got thrown in as a sort of scrap for the young people who might've picked up this book. Comes off as a sort of, "Oh, you're here huh? I guess I can scrounge up something for you, gimme a sec." At that point, I would've liked to have skipped the attempt to "include" us since the references and inferences made about the passages felt a little half-assed compared to the more passionate analysis on genres the author clearly liked more.

5.) Overall, the advice and lessons Maass presents aren't terrible or necessarily useless. If you are really starting from scratch, and you haven't the faintest idea where to start with writing, this might help you, especially if you're a bit older and in the target age range of who Maass apparently thinks he's speaking to. If you can look past all the things I mentioned, maybe you have a stronger stomach than me or you don't get as bored or irritated as I do listening to yet another old white guy tell you why To Kill a Mockingbird was the greatest book on racism since ever, then you might also find something here to keep you turning the page. This book is a "take what you can leave what you can't" kind of situation. For me personally, I see where the points he makes have validity but I don't feel like I learned anything new from the book that I haven't or wouldn't have learned from an analysis channel on YouTube, which is disheartening considering how much getting through this book felt like a chore. If I had to sit through all this I would've at least liked to have learned something.

tldr: The book feels like your white dad telling you about the old racist books he likes and why he likes them, and you just kind of have to sit there and take it, but he's not being totally rude and snotty about it so you don't stop him.

[John F. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn’t learn much more from this, AND this was written from such a white privileged male perspective.. weird to describe but it didn’t feel nice. The examples chosen could have been improved as well

TW: mentions of rape, and death/murder of a child (literally for no reason??!?!?)

[Celina Kamler · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was recommended by my writing teacher. I wish I hadn't purchased it. The author's bombastic and sexist opinions are trotted out as facts. He insists that, as an agent, he is the ultimate arbiter of taste and quality in literature. It's truly vomit-inducing. Speaking of vomit-inducing, there is an excerpt within the first 50 pages that includes a graphic description of child sodomy. I'm pretty sure he could have selected a different example to make his point about creating a three-dimensional anti-hero.

Want more reasons to avoid this book? This is what Maass had to say about women's fiction writers: "On the other hand, women's fiction writers usually hope to do more than entertain. Their fiction may be warm, fun, and loaded with chocolate chips and recipes, but it's also serious." (p.7)

Seeking recommendations for a better book on this topic that is not written by a misogynistic blow-hard who never actually published a single work of fiction.

[Sarah Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

It feels like a lot of this is subjective: what engages the author, a literary agent, emotionally. This bothered me sometimes...who is this reader telling a fiction writer how to write? But I think the reader’s perspective isn’t talked about enough in craft, so I welcome this book’s unique point of view. At times it felt like there wasn’t enough here to fill a full book. Some of the segments were super short and consisted mainly of examples Maass feels are effective. However, there are a lot of good takeaways here, especially if you need to work on characterization (and I do!). I will say the exercises are particularly helpful. I always appreciate a craft book with solid exercises and prompts to put the ideas into action.

[Roma Cordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is amazing. It was recommended by a member of my critique group and I can see why. It has countless nuggets of useful information for writers. I will have to read again in its entirety since it’s impossible to pick up everything in one read.

[Wilja Wiedenhöft · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dies ist kein einfacher Schreibratgeber sondern zeigt einem richtige Techniken zum aktiven anwenden, es hat mir sehr geholfen!

[Michelle Cuéllar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este es el primer libro de escritura que siento que se alinea perfectamente con el proposito que tengo como escritora. Muy, muy valioso para poder desarollar no solo el modo tecnico de cómo escribir una historia sino de cómo hacer que se sientan todas las emociones que quieres transmitir con tus palabras.

Am�� completamente.

[Louise Foerster · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Ultimate Guide for Writers

Donald Maass’s THE EMOTIONAL CRAFT OF FICTION: HOW TO WRITE THE STORY BENEATH THE SURFACE is the ultimate writer’s guide to telling a story. Set aside the countless books about plotting, structure, and craft and read this book before you go any further in imagining, drafting, and revising your stories. Throughout this pithy, important book, Maass instructs, demonstrates, motivates, and then gently pushes you out the door to write your story as only you can do. Read it in one exhilarating thrill ride and then read it again slowly to savor its clear prose and authoritative examples. Do the 34 Emotional Mastery exercises and witness your stories grow complexity, depth, and power. Learn from a brilliant master of story at his most personal, eloquent, and encouraging: “The spirit you bring is the spirit that we’ll feel as we read, and of all the feelings you can excite in your readers the most gripping and beautiful is the spirit of hope.”

[Zoe Brook · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think the usefulness of this book is the premise that emotions in writing are useful and important and connect the reader to the story.
The rest of the book around that premise ranges from meh to eugh for me.

It started with some pretty ableist things about writing characters with mental illnesses and that readers need a safe distance from them. Snobbery and triggering examples used mentioned in other reviews, and a lack of coherence that was really frustrating. I often lost track of where the thought began by the time its end was reached.

Some of the questions asked in the exercises might be useful, but aren't worth the rest of it in my opinion. And a good chunk of them were not broadly applicable depending on the intended genre and tone of your writing.

[Josiah DeGraaf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal book on the craft of writing. This book was incredibly helpful to me while finishing the line edits of my current work-in-progress. And it's definitely a book I want to return to again. Maass' advice is not only practical and sharp--he also draws examples from a wide range of stories both contemporary and historical to make the best case he can for this model of writing.

Recommended to any serious fiction writer.

Rating: 4.5 Stars (Excellent).

[Leanne Albillar · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. The elitism, sexism, ableism, and all around “there’s only one right way to do things” snobbery killed my interest in this book quickly. The author assumes that everyone wants the same exact thing out of their reading experience as he does, and it’s the opposite of what I wanted. I’m interested in emotions. A book that claims to be about writing emotion but then immediately recommends pulling back and making jokes when your characters are in a dark place…not for me.

I also found the excerpts useless as examples of how to write emotion. My experiences of strong emotion when reading come from relating to and empathizing with characters, and that’s hard to do with out of context snippets (mainly from classics and literary fiction).

[Melanie Hooyenga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Keep a notebook handy, because you'll need it while reading this book. I read this while drafting a very complex — and emotional — novel, and every few pages I had ideas on how I could make my story better. Highly recommend!

[Nelson Zagalo · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Emotional Craft of Fiction” (2016) de Donald Maas é um livro curto, mas que procura ser incisivo, conseguindo-o na medida do que é possível quando falamos de arte, no caso literatura. Ou seja, Maas olha para o trabalho do escritor, para as suas ferramentas, e para o modo como as obras chegam aos leitores, em termos emocionais, e procura traçar um conjunto de ideias, princípios, que ajudem quem se interessa pela criação de emoção estética. Diria que o central do livro é desvelado no primeiro terço, ficando o restante demasiado colado a exemplos que se vão tornando de algum modo repetitivos. Dito isto, é um livro pelo qual vale a pena passar os olhos.


Existem dois pontos no livro que marcaram a minha leitura, o fundamento da emoção escrita, e os três modos de espelhar a emoção na escrita, que passo a ilustrar.

A Emoção é do Leitor

A principal ideia que Maas tenta construir no arranque do livro é que os criadores devem centrar os seus esforços em fazer com que os seus leitores sintam algo sobre si próprios e não sobre a história ou os personagens. Parece estranho, desde logo porque lemos literatura, romances, com a ideia de conhecer outras “pessoas”, outros mundos e realidades. Vamos atrás de perceber como se sentem as pessoas quando passam por eventos difíceis, com a ideia de que podemos aprender com o conhecimento dessas situações e reações. Contudo, quando Maas nos obriga a pensar no que realmente estamos a fazer quando lemos, estamos a emocionar-nos, mas essencialmente com aquilo que a nossa experiência do mundo nos permite simular do que estamos a ler. As vidas e emoções ali apresentadas são apenas estímulos que ativam as nossas conceções do mundo e consequentemente as nossas próprias emoções.

“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.”

No fundo, lemos para sentir aquilo que nos conseguem fazer sentir. Sim queremos saber mais, descobrir, mas queremos emocionar-nos com essas descobertas. Queremos que aquilo que nos contam seja novo, desconhecido, nos surpreenda, nos faça ver o mundo para além daquilo que já conhecíamos, e por isso sintamos o deslumbre emocional que nos afeta e dá prazer. Porque é aí que sentimos mudança dentro de nós mesmos, e a emoção só acontece com mudança de estados. Ou seja, a emoção não tem de estar na história, a história só tem de a provocar no leitor. A história pode apenas contextualizar, dar conta de algo, mas abster-se totalmente de qualquer julgamento, emocional ou moral, deixando tudo isso do lado do leitor. Para o efeito, Maas define três formas de o fazer.

1 – Modo Interior: o Contar

Aqui temos em essência, "relatos de personagens que estão a sentir tão efetivamente que os leitores acabam também por sentir" com eles. Mas não bastam descrições poéticas:

“Here’s an example: ‘His guts twisted in fear’. When you read that, do your own guts twist in fear? Probably not. Or this: ‘Her eyes shot daggers at him’. Do you feel simmering rage? Meh. Not so much. Such feelings fail to excite us because, of course, we’ve read them too many times. (…)

What gets readers going are feelings that are fresh and unexpected. (…)

Skillful authors play against expected feelings. They go down several emotional layers in order to bring up emotions that will catch readers by surprise (…)

There are many ways of looking at and feeling about what’s happening at any given moment. Stop your story at any point, ask the point-of-view character what she is feeling, and it’s never just one answer. Ask two characters what they feel about what’s happening and neither will ever say the same thing.”

2- Modo exterior: o Mostrar

Aqui a ideia não é apenas dar conta de ação, mas "provocar nos leitores o que as personagens podem estar a sentir, implicando o seu estado interior através das suas ações externas". Ou seja,

“Showing isn’t necessarily limited to external action or dialogue, or that which we can see or hear. Situations and conditions such as a state of being can be presented without emotions and, despite that, cause us to feel quite a bit.”

Maas cita Hemingway, dizendo:

“Find what gave you the emotion; what the action was that gave you the excitement. Then write it down making it clear so the reader will see it too and have the same feeling as you had.”

3- Modo Outro: diálogo entre o leitor e escritor

Aqui entramos num subtexto do que está escrita, procurando desse modo “fazer com que os leitores sintam algo que os próprios personagens da história não sentem".

“Creating that type of experience for readers requires more than just walking them through the plot. Feeling can be induced by plot developments, but only to a limited extent. Plot per se intrigues, excites, and surprises us, or so we hope, but not much more than that. As we’ve seen, characters’ emotional states also, by themselves, are limited in their impact.

The emotional wallop of a story is created by its totality. Readers experience that wallop when they must not just form an opinion about a story, but when they must study, question, and form an opinion about themselves. Simply put, they want to—they must—take an emotional journey.”

Para este efeito Maas cita nada menos do que a teoria da autodeterminação, ou seja daquilo que motiva o ser humano. Com a “Competência” a surgir como os desafios apresentados pela história que os leitores têm de resolver. Com a autonomia a ser oferecida na forma de múltiplas leituras possíveis de um acontecimento, em que o autor se abstém de condicionar o pensamento do leitor, e o deixa livre para escolher o que pensar. E por fim a relação que emerge pela proximidade com a ação e sentir dos personagens.


Naturalmente, os extratos apresentados acima parecem meras ideias soltas, mas isso acontece pela falta dos bons exemplos que Maas vai utilizando para ilustrar as abstrações.

Publicado bo VI:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh my word this pretty much sucked. All the other reviews sum it up quite well: people had issues with the sexist comments, the extremely inappropriate excerpt, and the fact much of this information isn't very applicable.
As a writer, I don't believe my sole job is to make the reader feel emotional. Yes, it would be great to have that affect on someone, but this book is marketed to create machined emotions. I think the author is somewhat onto something in the fact that emotions make us remember the lessons within books, but making a reader feel isn't the biggest marketing point of a book.
Overall, I felt this book was way too long. And its only 200 pages. I admit, I skimmed over the latter half of the excerpts (I can't see a single one that actually helped prove Maass' point), so I didn't get the full boring affect. I did fall asleep twice while reading this, which is quite the accomplishment. So I guess the author did make me feel something that wasn't even an emotion! Because I was freaking tired of his ramblings and storytelling. There wasn't much of a point to anything.
Let me sum it up to you what this author wants us to do:
-Don't make things boring. (No duh)
-Take every opportunity to add depth to your characters (Is this a new approach?)
-Stay positive because being positive is good!! :/
-Have character arcs (Again, not a new thing)
-Shock the reader so they don't get bored with your story

I know I'm just a teenager, and I haven't even been to college yet, but frankly, I didn't find any new or groundbreaking information in this book. The best piece of advice I got from here was a quote from Hemingway, so know that before paying eighteen freaking dollars for this book.

Here were the few things I liked:
The questions at the end of the chapter, the Hemingway quote, and a few sections that reminded me that I need to polish up my manuscript a bit more before beta readers get to it.

[Laura Joakimson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m giving this only two stars for being massively overrated and wanting to discourage people from buying this book instead of better ones out there. He starts by condescendingly describing “women’s fiction” (really dude?) and how it needs to be well written to satisfy him...(as if actual women have lower standards for ‘women’s fiction’) then gives an example from a male writer :) of Silver Linings Playbook and one of the writing samples is of the protagonist flipping out over Kenny G and throwing things all over a doctor’s office waiting room and being ushered to the doctor’s office while his mom and the receptionist clean up his mess. According to Maass this evokes empathy for the protagonist. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that the same scene can evoke empathy for the mother and receptionist cleaning up after him.

There’s a layer of emotional complexity missing in this work and there are better craft books out there. Like by Courtney Maum or Elizabeth Gilbert. Or Jane Smiley. Marguerite Duras. Alexander Chee. Mary Karr. Emotionality in storytelling is a great topic. It just deserves an expert. This author is not in his element when it comes to a range of emotions beyond his own.

[Tasha Seegmiller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is not big, but its depth is immeasurable. I allowed myself to be immersed completely in the lessons, taking in Maass' word of wisdom, considering my stories, and favorites written by others. Once again, Maass encourages and guides writers into a depth of story that many ignore but all will benefit from. It is a great study on how to write a story and ends with a call to writers that will inspire and encourage the creation of more words. Brilliant book.

[Gabrielle Pollack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh. My. Wow. This book was incredible. Personally, it really impressed upon me the beauty of storytelling and life in general. It's probably one of those craft books I'll end up reading over again.

Though I'd give a word of caution to any overly younger writers looking for a craft book to read (given some language and content), I really enjoyed it. *thumbs up*

[Tanya Gold]

If you're looking for a book on how to make readers connect with your writing emotionally, I'd recommend Lisa Cron's Wired for Story over this. It covers the same basic concepts, but goes into much more depth.

[Holly · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m sure there’s some good advice in this book somewhere, but it’s hidden between so much filler that I really couldn’t find it. The questions at the end of chapters will be useful at some point, but the chapters themselves, not so much.

[Katri Alatalo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Erilainen kirjoittamisopas, tarjosi uusia ajatuksia, meni pintaa syvemmälle kirjoittamiseen ja pääsi ehkä vähän valaisemaan sellaista mystistä asiaa, miten joissakin kirjoissa vain on "sitä jotakin".

[Coralie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, I have...mixed feelings about this one, but mostly not super positive ones. All in all, I took some good things away from it and I appreciate some of the ways it made me think. I also really loved the consistent implementation exercises attached to each point Maass made.

I have friends who really found this such a great craft book, and I'm so glad they gleaned good things from it. Some of the points Maass made I connected with and felt a little challenged (in a good way) by. So, for that, I'm thankful to have read it. I'm glad to have come away with the good from this one.

And I'm not going to sit here and bash the book either. I'll just say, I took some issues with a few things. Additionally, so many of the examples didn't connect for me. There were many examples I was not familiar with, but I appreciated how Maass included snippets from the books he referenced to illustrate the point more fully than just telling us about the scene. That said, the illustrations were hit or miss for me. Several were just books and scenes I wasn't remotely familiar with - though I could still see his point in some of those (I don't have to know a scene to understand what he's saying and see his point). On the other hand, several I didn't really think suited what he was saying super well and/or I just didn't connect with his point in some sections.

To be completely fair, I started this book a few years ago, came across a super disgusting example (which he did give forewarning about, I just thought I'd rather understand his point and keep going), and put the book down for about two years before deciding I did in fact want to go ahead and cautiously finish it. So, I enjoyed (and felt like I got more out of, ironically) the second half than the first. Personally, I think the offending example illustrated his point mostly well, but I would have found a far more appropriate example to use. I understand why he used that example, but I come from a worldview where I feel like it was unnecessary and not worth it.

So, take that for what you will. Go into the book knowing there is graphic content (a graphic sexual example) and some swearing in the book. It's not a book I'd give to young writers. I found some of the book and examples dry and not super engaging, but again, he had some thought-provoking points and some great exercises for implementation.

So, this one's a mixed bag for me. Not sure I'd rush to read any of his other stuff and this isn't one I can personally recommend, especially not without some strong precautions to be considered before going into it. But to each their own.