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The Fire in Fiction: Passion, Purpose and Techniques to Make Your Novel Great
Discover the Difference Between a So-So Manuscript and a Novel Readers Can't Forget
We've all read them: novels by our favorite authors that disappoint. Uninspired and lifeless, we wonder what happened. Was the author in a hurry? Did she have a bad year? Has he lost interest altogether?
Something similar is true of a great many unpublished manuscripts. They are okay stories that never take flight. They don't grip the imagination, let alone the heart. They merit only a shrug and a polite dismissal by agents and editors.
It doesn't have to be that way. In The Fire in Fiction, successful literary agent and author Donald Maass shows you not only how to infuse your story with deep conviction and fiery passion, but how to do it over and over again. The book features:
Techniques for capturing a special time and place, creating characters whose lives matter, nailing multiple-impact plot turns, making the supernatural real, infusing issues into fiction, and more.
Story-enriching exercises at the end of every chapter to show you how to apply the practical tools just covered to your own work.
Rich examples drawn from contemporary novels as diverse as The Lake House, Water for Elephants, and Jennifer Government to illustrate how various techniques work in actual stories.
Plus, Maass introduces an original technique that any novelist can use any time, in any scene, in any novel, even on the most uninspired day...to take the most powerful experiences from your personal life and turn those experiences directly into powerful fiction.
Tap into The Fire in Fiction, and supercharge your story with originality and spark!
We've all read them: novels by our favorite authors that disappoint. Uninspired and lifeless, we wonder what happened. Was the author in a hurry? Did she have a bad year? Has he lost interest altogether?
Something similar is true of a great many unpublished manuscripts. They are okay stories that never take flight. They don't grip the imagination, let alone the heart. They merit only a shrug and a polite dismissal by agents and editors.
It doesn't have to be that way. In The Fire in Fiction, successful literary agent and author Donald Maass shows you not only how to infuse your story with deep conviction and fiery passion, but how to do it over and over again. The book features:
Techniques for capturing a special time and place, creating characters whose lives matter, nailing multiple-impact plot turns, making the supernatural real, infusing issues into fiction, and more.
Story-enriching exercises at the end of every chapter to show you how to apply the practical tools just covered to your own work.
Rich examples drawn from contemporary novels as diverse as The Lake House, Water for Elephants, and Jennifer Government to illustrate how various techniques work in actual stories.
Plus, Maass introduces an original technique that any novelist can use any time, in any scene, in any novel, even on the most uninspired day...to take the most powerful experiences from your personal life and turn those experiences directly into powerful fiction.
Tap into The Fire in Fiction, and supercharge your story with originality and spark!
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
192 people are currently reading
3668 people want to read
About the author
Donald Maass
20 books221 followersDonald 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 200 reviews
May 24, 2011
Most of the information here is the standard stuff you would find in any good how-to book on writing. But there are also some innovative techniques that make a lot of sense and give a deeper understanding of how to make fiction work. The description of techniques is good, how other authors employ them is clearly chown, but how to use them in your own writing gets a bit woolly.
This isn't surprising since he can't know the specifics of your story, but at times it felt too generic in its approach, the way an example of an equation in maths class seems straightforward, but ends up having little bearing on the questions in the text book once you start your homework at home.
The most useful concept, in my opinion, was that of micro-tension. Every piece of dialogue or action or narrative needs to suggest more than basic facts and information. In order to do this you can simply adjust the tone of delivery to become slightly more antagonistic and that will create tension. For example:
Jack stood at the bus stop. The buses arrived every 15 min and the journey to work took half an hour.
In this example let's say you need to know about Jack's journey for later events to make sense. The information is straightforward exposition. However, you can add tension by doing something like this:
Jack stood at the bus stop. Supposedly the buses came every 15 min but that was a joke. And they were always crammed full. Half an hour of sweaty armpits to look forward to.
By creating a sense of dissatisfaction, even if it's within the character's own mind, we create conflict between the idea of the bus coming and his issues with the service. That's where the tension comes from, opposing ideas within a single thought.
For more examples of how to use micro-tension go HERE.
Overall a useful book for the serious aspiring author, although it does take some studying to get the best out of it.
This isn't surprising since he can't know the specifics of your story, but at times it felt too generic in its approach, the way an example of an equation in maths class seems straightforward, but ends up having little bearing on the questions in the text book once you start your homework at home.
The most useful concept, in my opinion, was that of micro-tension. Every piece of dialogue or action or narrative needs to suggest more than basic facts and information. In order to do this you can simply adjust the tone of delivery to become slightly more antagonistic and that will create tension. For example:
Jack stood at the bus stop. The buses arrived every 15 min and the journey to work took half an hour.
In this example let's say you need to know about Jack's journey for later events to make sense. The information is straightforward exposition. However, you can add tension by doing something like this:
Jack stood at the bus stop. Supposedly the buses came every 15 min but that was a joke. And they were always crammed full. Half an hour of sweaty armpits to look forward to.
By creating a sense of dissatisfaction, even if it's within the character's own mind, we create conflict between the idea of the bus coming and his issues with the service. That's where the tension comes from, opposing ideas within a single thought.
For more examples of how to use micro-tension go HERE.
Overall a useful book for the serious aspiring author, although it does take some studying to get the best out of it.
October 21, 2020
Solid as ever from Maass, full of great advice. One thing I always appreciate from him is that he never softsoaps the truth about what makes a story engaging--or not.
July 12, 2014
I love Donald Maass' take on writing and what makes a good book. (I also own WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL.) Maass discourages churning out pages which may result in a book, yes, but what's the quality? Like only the best editors, Maass pushes writers to push past "good" and strive for excellent. The introductory chapter with a section on "Status Seekers and Storytellers" holds up a mirror--reading it was a reality check. Maass cuts through the bulls*%!, which he describes as writers declaring, "The book wrote itself!" and gets down to the deconstruction of great stories.
My favorite quote among many: "Storytellers look not to publishers to make them successful, but to themselves. They wonder how to top themselves with each new novel. Their grumbles are not about getting toured but about getting more time to deliver. Storytellers take calculated risks with their fiction. Mostly they try to make their stories bigger."
My favorite quote among many: "Storytellers look not to publishers to make them successful, but to themselves. They wonder how to top themselves with each new novel. Their grumbles are not about getting toured but about getting more time to deliver. Storytellers take calculated risks with their fiction. Mostly they try to make their stories bigger."
September 11, 2012
I'm about halfway through the first draft of my novel, spinning my wheels in that notorious middle-plot wasteland where not enough is happening. I can see where the story needs to go (I do know the ending!), but I've lost my momentum. One of my characters is pointless, I'm overrun with backstory, and there are way too many scenes without tension.
I realize it's a first draft and some crappiness is permitted at this point, but in trying to get myself out of the rut, I thought I'd finally give this book a shot. It's been on my shelf for ages and folks have told me it's great. Knowing that a lot of the exercises were revision-oriented, I planned to wait until the draft was complete, but I finally thought what the heck. I'm glad I didn't wait.
I've already worked through Maass's exercises on character (very helpful!) and his chapter on micro-tension alone is worth the cover price. As with Writing the Breakout Novel, he shares numerous examples of writers doing it "right" (as usual, spoilers abound -- had to skip a few of these!). You get brief glimpses behind the curtain at his lit agency, too, as he mentions particular approaches to storytelling that cause everyone in the office to groan. ("Weather beginning!") I wouldn't say this book is a catch-all for problems with your novel, but there's some great food for thought here on how to keep a reader's (and literary agent's) attention.
I realize it's a first draft and some crappiness is permitted at this point, but in trying to get myself out of the rut, I thought I'd finally give this book a shot. It's been on my shelf for ages and folks have told me it's great. Knowing that a lot of the exercises were revision-oriented, I planned to wait until the draft was complete, but I finally thought what the heck. I'm glad I didn't wait.
I've already worked through Maass's exercises on character (very helpful!) and his chapter on micro-tension alone is worth the cover price. As with Writing the Breakout Novel, he shares numerous examples of writers doing it "right" (as usual, spoilers abound -- had to skip a few of these!). You get brief glimpses behind the curtain at his lit agency, too, as he mentions particular approaches to storytelling that cause everyone in the office to groan. ("Weather beginning!") I wouldn't say this book is a catch-all for problems with your novel, but there's some great food for thought here on how to keep a reader's (and literary agent's) attention.
January 21, 2010
Bravo--
Because Donald Maass's earlier book, Writing the Breakout Novel was so good, I was afraid of being let down by his newest and didn't even touch it for a while when it arrived in mail.
What is he going to say that could be better? Is this going to be just a rehash of the old material in his earlier book?
Doubts swirled, but I finally convinced myself to read it.
What a ride.
He goes well above and beyond my highest expectations. Compared to his earlier book, the book is more tightly organized and focused, and comes with tons of practical tools to energize your manuscript with - something his earlier book didn't have. He really goes in depth with the most important topics of writing fiction, and Chapter 8 on micro-tension alone is worth the price of the entire book in my opinion.
It is extremely difficult to determine the cause from effects. What makes a good story? That is the million-dollar question I have been asking myself ever since I began writing seriously. I've read a fair number of books on writing but none of them seemed to do it for me. I groped further and read book after book, classic after classic in search of the holy grail of storytelling. But I couldn't figure it out. When I read Murakami, for example, I would lose myself in his world as if by magic and when I came back out of it, I could only say, "What the hell happened?"
And it looks like Mr. Maass could be the Galahad I have been looking for as he has a theory on the secret workings of this magic of good fiction. If not, at least he gives us a key to unlocking the mystery of The Good Story.
What's this key, this Holy Grail of Storytelling? That, my friends, you must find for yourself between the covers of this book.
A must read for any serious fiction writer.
Because Donald Maass's earlier book, Writing the Breakout Novel was so good, I was afraid of being let down by his newest and didn't even touch it for a while when it arrived in mail.
What is he going to say that could be better? Is this going to be just a rehash of the old material in his earlier book?
Doubts swirled, but I finally convinced myself to read it.
What a ride.
He goes well above and beyond my highest expectations. Compared to his earlier book, the book is more tightly organized and focused, and comes with tons of practical tools to energize your manuscript with - something his earlier book didn't have. He really goes in depth with the most important topics of writing fiction, and Chapter 8 on micro-tension alone is worth the price of the entire book in my opinion.
It is extremely difficult to determine the cause from effects. What makes a good story? That is the million-dollar question I have been asking myself ever since I began writing seriously. I've read a fair number of books on writing but none of them seemed to do it for me. I groped further and read book after book, classic after classic in search of the holy grail of storytelling. But I couldn't figure it out. When I read Murakami, for example, I would lose myself in his world as if by magic and when I came back out of it, I could only say, "What the hell happened?"
And it looks like Mr. Maass could be the Galahad I have been looking for as he has a theory on the secret workings of this magic of good fiction. If not, at least he gives us a key to unlocking the mystery of The Good Story.
What's this key, this Holy Grail of Storytelling? That, my friends, you must find for yourself between the covers of this book.
A must read for any serious fiction writer.
April 16, 2024
I've had the book on my shelf for years since the author presented it at our St. Louis class. But when I opened it this year, the examples, and the exercises made sense. If it's not talking to you, wait and let the words sink in.
December 15, 2021
3.0
This book has its strengths and weaknesses. I wouldn't recommend this for everyone, but it certainly has some great ideas and exercises. I am working on my third draft of my first fantasy novel, and this book has been great for me to review and augment weak sections of my manuscript. It had some really good recommendations on creating non-cliche villains, erring on the side of drama, and finding books that well-exemplify a specific story-telling tactic that you are looking to improve. So, I would recommend this for authors that either:
a. Are working through a draft of their book (not starting from scratch)
b. Are open to reading plentiful excerpts from many different types of books and having Maass walk you through what was especially well done in these excerpts
c. Are looking for well-detailed, step-by-step exercises to improve various scenes in their WIP
I took points off, because for as often as Maass spoke about the dangers of writing something that readers will skim, I certainly skimmed a lot of this book. Each chapter was split into something that felt like:
10% introduction to chapter topic
70% specific examples from books <-- sections I skimmed
5% recap of the main message of the examples
15% review exercises to implement recommendations
I tend to prefer books on writing which don't use examples as the meat of their messaging. This tends to get redundant and honestly... I don't like jumping around through stories to get to the basic idea of what is being presented. I acknowledge this is a personal preference though, so in general, I'd recommend this.
This book has its strengths and weaknesses. I wouldn't recommend this for everyone, but it certainly has some great ideas and exercises. I am working on my third draft of my first fantasy novel, and this book has been great for me to review and augment weak sections of my manuscript. It had some really good recommendations on creating non-cliche villains, erring on the side of drama, and finding books that well-exemplify a specific story-telling tactic that you are looking to improve. So, I would recommend this for authors that either:
a. Are working through a draft of their book (not starting from scratch)
b. Are open to reading plentiful excerpts from many different types of books and having Maass walk you through what was especially well done in these excerpts
c. Are looking for well-detailed, step-by-step exercises to improve various scenes in their WIP
I took points off, because for as often as Maass spoke about the dangers of writing something that readers will skim, I certainly skimmed a lot of this book. Each chapter was split into something that felt like:
10% introduction to chapter topic
70% specific examples from books <-- sections I skimmed
5% recap of the main message of the examples
15% review exercises to implement recommendations
I tend to prefer books on writing which don't use examples as the meat of their messaging. This tends to get redundant and honestly... I don't like jumping around through stories to get to the basic idea of what is being presented. I acknowledge this is a personal preference though, so in general, I'd recommend this.
June 1, 2017
As aspiring writer one can feel overwhelmed with the amount of available books about how to become a successful writer. The true is : there is no magical recipe and after a few readings about the matter, you are going to realize the best way to start to write your own fiction is reading the masters and also a few non memorable writers (is always useful to have examples about how not to write). The challenge here is to identify how those writers achieve the pages we enjoy and admire.
The fire in fiction by Donald Mass excels showing us how writers do it. He show us some passages and explain with detail how they handle dramatic and comic effects, voices and other fiction devices that enrich novels.
The author , who is a Literary agent, seems to be focused on advice us about how to made our manuscripts acceptable for publishing. In the book’s introduction he distinguish two kind of writers: the status seekers and storytellers and after finish the book definitely I want to be a storyteller.
Just a warning: this is a book for someone who already started to write and have a manuscript to work on. At the end of each chapter there is a set of exercises to be applied on our manuscripts. If you are looking for advice about how to start to write I would recommend another book such as the Gotham writers’ Workshop: Writing fiction.[https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Fictio...]
The fire in fiction by Donald Mass excels showing us how writers do it. He show us some passages and explain with detail how they handle dramatic and comic effects, voices and other fiction devices that enrich novels.
The author , who is a Literary agent, seems to be focused on advice us about how to made our manuscripts acceptable for publishing. In the book’s introduction he distinguish two kind of writers: the status seekers and storytellers and after finish the book definitely I want to be a storyteller.
Just a warning: this is a book for someone who already started to write and have a manuscript to work on. At the end of each chapter there is a set of exercises to be applied on our manuscripts. If you are looking for advice about how to start to write I would recommend another book such as the Gotham writers’ Workshop: Writing fiction.[https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Fictio...]
November 29, 2011
The Fire in Fiction
By Donald Maass
This is not the type of book I normally post a review about on my Blog, but it is such a fabulous tool for writers, I just can’t pass up the opportunity. THE FIRE IN FICTION is a powerful guide to writing fiction. The author’s insight into the many styles and skill levels is simply uncanny.
The format serves as a fantastic cover-to-cover read as well as a dynamic reference. Mr. Maass gives reason and definition to admirable style. In a short amount of text, he discusses ‘Hemingway-esque minimalism,’ as an unforgiving style that is misunderstood and rarely mastered.
This concise detail is consistent throughout THE FIRE IN FICTION as the author tackles a multitude of issues authors face in their struggle to succeed. The guide begins with a memorable introduction that sheds light upon ‘the storyteller and the status seeker.’ Mr. Maas proceeds into one of my favorites, ‘Protagonists vs. Heroes’ from there he tackles issues of character voice and hyperreality. In each and every chapter he simplifies issues often complicated by others.
Writers and authors, I highly recommend this guide. It is simply an invaluable tool. On a scale of 1 to 5 stars, I give this guide a 6 star review.
By Donald Maass
This is not the type of book I normally post a review about on my Blog, but it is such a fabulous tool for writers, I just can’t pass up the opportunity. THE FIRE IN FICTION is a powerful guide to writing fiction. The author’s insight into the many styles and skill levels is simply uncanny.
The format serves as a fantastic cover-to-cover read as well as a dynamic reference. Mr. Maass gives reason and definition to admirable style. In a short amount of text, he discusses ‘Hemingway-esque minimalism,’ as an unforgiving style that is misunderstood and rarely mastered.
This concise detail is consistent throughout THE FIRE IN FICTION as the author tackles a multitude of issues authors face in their struggle to succeed. The guide begins with a memorable introduction that sheds light upon ‘the storyteller and the status seeker.’ Mr. Maas proceeds into one of my favorites, ‘Protagonists vs. Heroes’ from there he tackles issues of character voice and hyperreality. In each and every chapter he simplifies issues often complicated by others.
Writers and authors, I highly recommend this guide. It is simply an invaluable tool. On a scale of 1 to 5 stars, I give this guide a 6 star review.
July 16, 2020
Like virtually all of the Donald Maass books on writing I've read, I've left highlighted notes throughout this one for future reference. I highly recommend his books.
April 4, 2011
My favorite writing book is Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott, but now Birdy will have to share the #1 spot. Bird by Bird and the Fire in Fiction are both about writing but cover completely different things. Bird is about the writing life, getting your first draft down, how to keep your butt in the chair, why you should aways keep paper and pen in your back pocket.
Fire is about specifics. You've got your first draft done. Even your second or third draft. But it's still not getting interest. The Fire in Fiction skips the basics, such as hook and point of view. It goes much deeper. It teaches you how to keep your readers reading after the hook.
Want to make your protagonist more memorable? Even harder, want to make your secondary characters more memorable? "Special-ness comes not from a character but from their impact on the protagonist. What are the details that measure their impact? How specific can you make them?"
The books that cover the basics teach you that your book is built on scenes and all scenes worth their weight need conflict and must move the plot forward. This book digs deeper and talks about inner and outer turning points in each scene. Maass uses the analogy about how action scenes in movies are planned and shot in detailed frames. He shows you how to rewind and fast-forward through the scenes and how to use oblique angles to heighten effect (and we are talking writing here, not just camera work).
Oh and don't forget the tornado effect - that's a powerful device. Sorry you'll have to read the book to find out what it is.
The book provides excellent exercises, broken down step-by-step, for how to accomplish things like:
- stripping down dialogue to heighten conflict.
- Make setting become its own character.
- How to link details and emotions.
- Develop a character's voice. Experiment with narrative voice.
- The extra steps you can take (you MUST take) to make a real antagonist.
- Three different techniques to help your reader suspend disbelief (if you are writing fantasy, SF or thrillers).
- There's even a chapter on developing humor and satire
What you won't find: plot structure - the excellent three act structure or hero's journey structure. Save the Cat by Blake Snyder is next on my list for that. (I also recommend the Writer's Journey for this).
Here's an example of a step in an exercise that I just picked at random:
"Create three hints in this scene that your protaonist or point-of-view character will get what he wants. Build three reasons to believe that he won't get what he wants."
The last two chapters are the very best of all. What's the secret to unstoppable page turning? It's NOT action. What? No really. It's micro-tension. Don't know what that is exactly? Maybe you can guess what it is, and are curious about how to implement it? This is a MUST READ.
And the last chapter, simply titled "The fire in fiction". All the chapters give you fuel for a good hot fire, but this last chapter is the fire itself. This one blew me away. I'd love to tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.
No seriously, get this book (after you feel like you've mastered the basics). Buy it, because you'll want to keep it on your desk for constant reference. Make a rule that no other book ever gets placed on top of it. I really think it's that good.
Fire is about specifics. You've got your first draft done. Even your second or third draft. But it's still not getting interest. The Fire in Fiction skips the basics, such as hook and point of view. It goes much deeper. It teaches you how to keep your readers reading after the hook.
Want to make your protagonist more memorable? Even harder, want to make your secondary characters more memorable? "Special-ness comes not from a character but from their impact on the protagonist. What are the details that measure their impact? How specific can you make them?"
The books that cover the basics teach you that your book is built on scenes and all scenes worth their weight need conflict and must move the plot forward. This book digs deeper and talks about inner and outer turning points in each scene. Maass uses the analogy about how action scenes in movies are planned and shot in detailed frames. He shows you how to rewind and fast-forward through the scenes and how to use oblique angles to heighten effect (and we are talking writing here, not just camera work).
Oh and don't forget the tornado effect - that's a powerful device. Sorry you'll have to read the book to find out what it is.
The book provides excellent exercises, broken down step-by-step, for how to accomplish things like:
- stripping down dialogue to heighten conflict.
- Make setting become its own character.
- How to link details and emotions.
- Develop a character's voice. Experiment with narrative voice.
- The extra steps you can take (you MUST take) to make a real antagonist.
- Three different techniques to help your reader suspend disbelief (if you are writing fantasy, SF or thrillers).
- There's even a chapter on developing humor and satire
What you won't find: plot structure - the excellent three act structure or hero's journey structure. Save the Cat by Blake Snyder is next on my list for that. (I also recommend the Writer's Journey for this).
Here's an example of a step in an exercise that I just picked at random:
"Create three hints in this scene that your protaonist or point-of-view character will get what he wants. Build three reasons to believe that he won't get what he wants."
The last two chapters are the very best of all. What's the secret to unstoppable page turning? It's NOT action. What? No really. It's micro-tension. Don't know what that is exactly? Maybe you can guess what it is, and are curious about how to implement it? This is a MUST READ.
And the last chapter, simply titled "The fire in fiction". All the chapters give you fuel for a good hot fire, but this last chapter is the fire itself. This one blew me away. I'd love to tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.
No seriously, get this book (after you feel like you've mastered the basics). Buy it, because you'll want to keep it on your desk for constant reference. Make a rule that no other book ever gets placed on top of it. I really think it's that good.
June 9, 2013
Not the usual writing manual--this book is ideal for writers who have a complete manuscript, but still want to "punch it up". Author Donald Maass is a well-known literary agent, so as far as marketing fiction goes, there are few more knowledgeable sources. He draws examples from a wide range of fiction, from thrillers and sci-fi to Don DeLillo and Andre Dubus. Chapters cover microtension, dialogue that moves, and other techniques to entice a reader to hang on every word of your 500 page magnum opus--and each feature exercises drawing from your own manuscript (I didn't do them, since this was a library book, but I've earmarked some in my brain and plan to apply them!)
July 8, 2010
Picked up some good insights from this book. I liked the format -- Maass uses a lot of examples from contemporary fiction. The only weird part is that sometimes I found those examples boring and started skimming...and his whole point was to show us how to write novels that people read instead of skimming.
August 13, 2012
The opening pages really incite you to get started improving your writing. I've encountered most of the improvements since I started writing before, but the examples from popular writers are very helpful. What I like best is the exercises throughout where you can check your work and also think about where you are in a given work.
August 13, 2013
I only wish I could give it more stars.
For the most part, the topics here are advanced. If you don't have a grip on things like plot, P.O.V., passive writing, and when to show/tell, then you might want to work your way up to this book. But I have no doubts the ideas here will help make anyone's fiction writing better.
For the most part, the topics here are advanced. If you don't have a grip on things like plot, P.O.V., passive writing, and when to show/tell, then you might want to work your way up to this book. But I have no doubts the ideas here will help make anyone's fiction writing better.
September 25, 2014
It's alright... Too many examples and not enough on the craft. He has interesting ideas but they get bogged down in passages and passages of examples that just make your eyes glaze over. Yes examples are good I understand, but less is more sometimes. And I'd rather know the author's own analysis of the subject being talked about, not the summary of other author's work.
October 1, 2017
A few decent sections highlighting what Maas calls "microtension," but the rest of the book lacks substance. Loaded down by hundreds of examples (some of them not even very good) that barely help explain the topic. Horribly edited/proofread as well, with some hilariously bad typos. Don't bother.
June 21, 2009
This stays on my shelf to pull out over and over again. Definitely a book that a writer needs.
April 7, 2011
I didn't enjoy the style in which the book was written, which was primarily focused around examples of what the author believed to be good writing. Others may find it useful, but I did not.
October 24, 2019
I liked this one a lot more than Writing the Breakout Novel (it's more up to date for one thing, but still ten years old) but it wasn't life-changing. As in his earlier book, Maass gives us a lot of examples around 1-2 pages long, and asks us to observe certain characteristics about those extracts that work for him--the problem is, they don't always work for me! Probably because I haven't read the rest of the novel. This is exactly the issue that dogs much teaching of writing; if you really want to see what you should do to make a novel great, there's no substitute for reading great novels (ones that are great for YOU, that is, not necessarily "the classics" unless you want to write like a Victorian novelist) and making mental or actual notes on what's working.
Maass follows each chapter with a set of exercises, most of which, I'll admit, I didn't do as they would involve HOURS of work. If I ever have six months to spare and am aiming at bringing a draft up to Booker-winning level I will definitely go back to this book, but I quickly get impatient with exercises such as "rewrite this page in reverse chronological order, then as a journal, finally from a great distance" (real example). I think that says a lot about me as a writer, but as a reader I tend to shy away from books that feel overly workshopped and this, my friends, is a workshop (without feedback).
Another interesting, good, but ultimately skimmable book on writing that probably won't stick in my head for long. Still, I think it's a really good idea to think about process and craft on a regular basis and this book fits into my intention to do just that.
Maass follows each chapter with a set of exercises, most of which, I'll admit, I didn't do as they would involve HOURS of work. If I ever have six months to spare and am aiming at bringing a draft up to Booker-winning level I will definitely go back to this book, but I quickly get impatient with exercises such as "rewrite this page in reverse chronological order, then as a journal, finally from a great distance" (real example). I think that says a lot about me as a writer, but as a reader I tend to shy away from books that feel overly workshopped and this, my friends, is a workshop (without feedback).
Another interesting, good, but ultimately skimmable book on writing that probably won't stick in my head for long. Still, I think it's a really good idea to think about process and craft on a regular basis and this book fits into my intention to do just that.
January 29, 2018
I often find it helpful to read a book about craft of writing when I'm in the middle of a project. This book was just what I needed at this point it time; it helped me articulate the core idea/value/takeaway in my novel-in-progress.
Highly recommended!
Highly recommended!
May 17, 2020
Another FABULOUS craft book by Donald Maass--sit back and wait for the next one because I'm obsessed with his view of writing and publishing. <3
November 2, 2024
One of the absolute best books on writing I’ve ever read. So many practical and useful tools and ideas. Can’t wait to get started on using them!
February 25, 2025
My #1 most-reached-for writing craft book. I love this book.
December 25, 2025
Donald Maass has always written like a man holding a lit match over a manuscript. Not in the sense of threatened destruction, though the metaphor is not wrong, but in the sense of urgency: if the page will not catch, if the scene will not flare, then what, exactly, are we doing here? “The Fire in Fiction” arrives with that same impatience, equal parts diagnosis and dare. It is a craft book that behaves less like a workbook and more like a pressure test, insisting that the question is not whether a novel is well made, but whether it is alive.
Maass’s governing argument is simple enough to sound obvious and, on the page, hard enough to practice: readers do not read for information, or even for event, but for consequence. They read to feel something tighten. They read to sense the moment when a character can no longer remain intact. The book’s keynote term is microtension, but the term matters less than the perception behind it. Maass is after the unignorable pull in a paragraph, the slight wrongness in a line of dialogue, the covert cost in an apparently ordinary exchange. If a page is smooth, he implies, it is probably dead.
You can hear, in that insistence, a long apprenticeship among slush piles and conference rooms, where the complaint “nothing happens” is rarely literal. Something happens. The problem is that nothing matters. A scene is built to convey facts, not to force choice. A chapter is built to set up later action, not to injure anyone now. Characters speak to exchange information, not to protect themselves, wound each other, or fail to say what would change everything. Maass’s talent is naming the almost invisible ways a narrative can anesthetize itself: politeness where there should be risk, clarity where there should be dread, competence where there should be want.
The early chapters establish the emotional physics the book will use repeatedly: protagonists are not heroes. A hero can be admirable and still be distant; a protagonist must be vulnerable. Maass distrusts the glossy figure of aspiration, the competent problem-solver with the clean moral stance and the efficient brain. He prefers the person who wants badly and cannot have cleanly. In his telling, a protagonist is defined less by what they can do than by what they cannot bear to lose – dignity, love, a self-conception that has been used as shelter. This is not a call for misery as aesthetic. It is a reminder that story is made of friction, and friction requires exposure.
Microtension is the book’s most durable tool, and Maass treats it like a discipline rather than a trick. Tension is not an occasional ingredient – a late-stage shove, a chase, a reveal – but a continuous condition. Every page must contain a question, a pressure, a slight instability. Microtension is not melodrama; it is the opposite of slackness. It can live in understatement, in the pause before a reply, in the moment a character chooses the safest wording and thereby reveals fear. It can live in a gesture that is meant as kindness and lands as dismissal. Maass keeps returning to this point with a stubbornness that feels, at times, like sermon and, at its best, like calibration.
If microtension is the book’s heartbeat, stakes are its bloodstream. Maass’s distinction between external stakes and internal stakes is familiar, but he sharpens it by refusing scale as a substitute for intimacy. A city can be in danger and the scene can still be dead. A marriage can be at risk and the scene can still be dead. What animates the page is not the magnitude of the outcome but the specificity of its meaning. What does failure do to the protagonist’s self-image? What belief will fracture? What private humiliation will be confirmed? Maass’s insistence here is quietly radical in an era of loglines and “high concept,” reminding writers that an explosion is not an emotion.
That emphasis on internal cost leads him into character arc and the twin journeys – inner and outer – that he insists a novel must braid. Here, too, the book’s strength is its refusal of consolation. Arc is not self-improvement, not the inspirational curve of a seminar story. It is change under duress, sometimes upward, sometimes sideways, sometimes downward. Characters resist change because their flaws are not accidents; they are strategies. A person avoids intimacy because intimacy has hurt them. A person clings to control because chaos once destroyed something precious. A person performs goodness because it has been the price of belonging. In Maass’s model, a novel is the apparatus that forces those strategies to fail.
A recurring pleasure of “The Fire in Fiction” is the way it treats plot as moral physics. Actions have weight. Choices close doors. Events are not simply things that happen to a character; they are the consequences of what the character has done to avoid pain. The outer journey, in Maass’s formulation, exists to pressure the inner journey. Plot is not a parade of incidents, not a sequence of “and then” scenes. It is cause and effect as emotional argument. If a scene can be removed without changing who the protagonist is, Maass implies, it is not a scene so much as a pause.
From there he expands the lens outward into public stakes, love, and values – chapters that argue for the full bandwidth of consequence. Public stakes matter only when anchored in a private core; otherwise they drift into abstraction, the language of causes and systems without human friction. Love, in his framing, is not sweetness but exposure. It raises the cost of every choice because it makes every choice a potential betrayal. Values are the bedrock that turns conflict into meaning. What does a character stand for? What do they choose against? What part of themselves will they sacrifice to remain who they claim to be?
It helps that Maass writes in a voice that refuses to whisper. The style is brisk, declarative, impatient with hedging. His sentences often sound like instructions delivered across a desk: stop explaining, stop protecting, stop making it easy. He does not indulge the romantic myth of the writer as delicate instrument. He writes like a professional who has seen too many competent drafts die of politeness. The tone can feel like a stern coach, but the sternness is purposeful. Maass is trying to dislodge a reader from the comfort of “good enough.”
Maass’s fondness for exercises is part of the book’s argument. He does not merely describe “fire” in the abstract; he repeatedly asks the reader to locate it, page by page, and to notice where it is missing. The prompts are often blunt in the Maass manner: name what your protagonist is ashamed of, decide what they will not admit, identify the moment a scene turns from safe to risky. At their best, these exercises feel less like homework and more like a flashlight. They do not supply answers, but they make avoidance visible, which is sometimes the more important gift.
He is also unusually attentive to the difference between motion and momentum. Many drafts, he suggests, mistake activity for urgency: characters travel, argue, investigate, flee, arrive. The prose stays busy. The reader stays cool. Maass’s revision stance is to ask what the activity costs. What does the character sacrifice to keep moving? What must they give up to obtain the next clue, the next confession, the next chance at love? This question is as useful for a quiet domestic scene as for a caper, which is one reason the book’s advice travels across genres more gracefully than its combustible title might imply.
At the same time, the book can over-rely on intensity as a universal solvent. Maass’s counsel often moves toward escalation: raise the stakes, sharpen the dilemma, make the choice harder, deepen the wound. For writers already prone to overwriting, or to scenes that strain for significance, the advice can tempt excess. The more nuanced reading is that Maass is not asking for bigger feelings, but for truer ones – feelings that are permitted to have consequences. The difference is subtle, and the book does not always pause long enough to teach it.
Still, the book’s obsession with heat can risk flattening the range of literary experience. Not every powerful novel announces itself as a blaze. Some books achieve their intensity by chill rather than flame, by the slow accrual of dread, by a cool intelligence that refuses overt heat. There is also a tradition of restraint that is not avoidance: the sentence that refuses to emote because the character cannot, the narrative distance that becomes its own moral stance, the quiet that is made unbearable precisely because nothing is said. Maass nods toward these possibilities, but the engine of the book prefers ignition to frost.
The chapter on uncertainty, however, complicates the caricature and reveals Maass at his most literary. Uncertainty, as he uses it, is not confusion; it is the refusal to resolve moral and emotional questions too quickly. It is the gap that invites the reader to participate. A story with fire is not necessarily a story with answers. Often it is a story that ends with ash: the recognition that loss has occurred, that the self cannot be restored, that love may not save anyone. In a culture that trains writers to soothe, Maass’s insistence on sustained uncertainty feels like permission to stop being polite.
The later chapters on symbols, premise, voice, and theme continue that movement from technique toward coherence. Symbols, he suggests, are not puzzles planted after the fact but resonant objects and images that naturally gather meaning when a story’s emotional logic is consistent. Premise is not a marketable hook but a condition that relentlessly tests the protagonist’s defenses. Voice is not ornament but attitude – the story’s stance toward its own events – and it cannot exist without stakes. Theme is not a message taped to the novel’s forehead; it is what the novel proves through consequence.
There is, however, a practical complaint that some writers will feel in their wrists as they turn the pages. “The Fire in Fiction” is not a step-by-step manual. Maass is strongest when he names a deficiency – neutrality, protected protagonists, scenes that merely exchange information – and weakest when the fix requires granular demonstration. He offers exercises and examples, but the method remains largely rhetorical: he convinces you that your pages must burn, then sends you back to the desk to discover how. For writers who crave scaffolding, this can feel like being told to build a house by being shown a photograph of one.
Yet even that limitation contains a kind of honesty. Maass is not pretending that revision is a checklist. He is arguing that the core difficulty is not ignorance of technique but avoidance of risk. The book keeps returning to the same unflattering questions: where, in your draft, are you being kind to your characters in order to spare yourself? Where are you explaining because you fear misunderstanding? Where are you choosing prettiness because you fear pain? Maass’s bluntness can be a nuisance, but it is also a kind of respect. He assumes you can bear the truth that your draft is safe because you are safe.
It is hard to deny the effect of the book on an attentive reader. “The Fire in Fiction” changes the way you look at paragraphs. It makes you suspicious of scenes that merely convey information. It makes you ask, with a certain mercilessness, what is at risk right now – what could go wrong, what is being withheld, what is being avoided, what it would cost to speak plainly. It invites you to revise not by beautifying but by tightening the screws. You begin to see that a scene can contain almost no plot and still be tense if two people want incompatible things and both are afraid to say so.
The book’s explicit emphasis on the writer’s courage clarifies what has been implicit all along. Maass’s true subject is not tension but self-protection. Writers soften consequences because they fear cruelty. They tidy endings because they fear ambiguity. They make protagonists likable because they fear judgment. They explain because they fear being misunderstood. “The Fire in Fiction” is a sustained argument against those reflexes. It asks for a different kind of generosity, one that trusts the reader with difficulty and trusts the characters with consequence.
That demand is invigorating and, at times, exhausting. A novel cannot be all climax. Not every scene can be a lit fuse. Life contains the ordinary, the repetitive, the apparently uneventful, and part of the art of fiction is making room for those textures without losing tension. Maass would argue, fairly, that the ordinary still contains stakes, that every moment contains a choice, a fear, a desire. He is right. But there is a point at which the injunction to never relax can begin to feel like an injunction to never breathe, and the book does not always offer a vocabulary for ease that is not surrender.
What saves him from dogma is his realism about cost. Fire is not a constant roar. It is the moment when something changes and cannot be undone. It is the quiet line that lands like a verdict. It is the pause after a betrayal. It is the scene that, on rereading, you realize could not have ended any other way because the character could not have remained who they were. In those moments, the book’s most radical instruction becomes clear: stop protecting the self you are writing. Let it be altered. Let it pay.
“The Fire in Fiction” is not the only craft book a serious writer needs, and it does not pretend to be. Its strength is not comprehensive coverage of technique but a fierce concentration on what technique is for. It is a book you return to when your draft is competent and dead, when your scenes behave and your characters behave and you cannot remember why you began. It reminds you that readers come to fiction for the experience of risk – not the risk of plot, necessarily, but the risk of being known.
In that spirit, it deserves a place on the shelf not as scripture but as catalyst. It will not write your sentences for you. It will, if you let it, make you less willing to accept sentences that do not matter. For that goading clarity, and for its insistence that craft is ultimately a form of emotional honesty, I would place it at 82 out of 100.
Maass’s governing argument is simple enough to sound obvious and, on the page, hard enough to practice: readers do not read for information, or even for event, but for consequence. They read to feel something tighten. They read to sense the moment when a character can no longer remain intact. The book’s keynote term is microtension, but the term matters less than the perception behind it. Maass is after the unignorable pull in a paragraph, the slight wrongness in a line of dialogue, the covert cost in an apparently ordinary exchange. If a page is smooth, he implies, it is probably dead.
You can hear, in that insistence, a long apprenticeship among slush piles and conference rooms, where the complaint “nothing happens” is rarely literal. Something happens. The problem is that nothing matters. A scene is built to convey facts, not to force choice. A chapter is built to set up later action, not to injure anyone now. Characters speak to exchange information, not to protect themselves, wound each other, or fail to say what would change everything. Maass’s talent is naming the almost invisible ways a narrative can anesthetize itself: politeness where there should be risk, clarity where there should be dread, competence where there should be want.
The early chapters establish the emotional physics the book will use repeatedly: protagonists are not heroes. A hero can be admirable and still be distant; a protagonist must be vulnerable. Maass distrusts the glossy figure of aspiration, the competent problem-solver with the clean moral stance and the efficient brain. He prefers the person who wants badly and cannot have cleanly. In his telling, a protagonist is defined less by what they can do than by what they cannot bear to lose – dignity, love, a self-conception that has been used as shelter. This is not a call for misery as aesthetic. It is a reminder that story is made of friction, and friction requires exposure.
Microtension is the book’s most durable tool, and Maass treats it like a discipline rather than a trick. Tension is not an occasional ingredient – a late-stage shove, a chase, a reveal – but a continuous condition. Every page must contain a question, a pressure, a slight instability. Microtension is not melodrama; it is the opposite of slackness. It can live in understatement, in the pause before a reply, in the moment a character chooses the safest wording and thereby reveals fear. It can live in a gesture that is meant as kindness and lands as dismissal. Maass keeps returning to this point with a stubbornness that feels, at times, like sermon and, at its best, like calibration.
If microtension is the book’s heartbeat, stakes are its bloodstream. Maass’s distinction between external stakes and internal stakes is familiar, but he sharpens it by refusing scale as a substitute for intimacy. A city can be in danger and the scene can still be dead. A marriage can be at risk and the scene can still be dead. What animates the page is not the magnitude of the outcome but the specificity of its meaning. What does failure do to the protagonist’s self-image? What belief will fracture? What private humiliation will be confirmed? Maass’s insistence here is quietly radical in an era of loglines and “high concept,” reminding writers that an explosion is not an emotion.
That emphasis on internal cost leads him into character arc and the twin journeys – inner and outer – that he insists a novel must braid. Here, too, the book’s strength is its refusal of consolation. Arc is not self-improvement, not the inspirational curve of a seminar story. It is change under duress, sometimes upward, sometimes sideways, sometimes downward. Characters resist change because their flaws are not accidents; they are strategies. A person avoids intimacy because intimacy has hurt them. A person clings to control because chaos once destroyed something precious. A person performs goodness because it has been the price of belonging. In Maass’s model, a novel is the apparatus that forces those strategies to fail.
A recurring pleasure of “The Fire in Fiction” is the way it treats plot as moral physics. Actions have weight. Choices close doors. Events are not simply things that happen to a character; they are the consequences of what the character has done to avoid pain. The outer journey, in Maass’s formulation, exists to pressure the inner journey. Plot is not a parade of incidents, not a sequence of “and then” scenes. It is cause and effect as emotional argument. If a scene can be removed without changing who the protagonist is, Maass implies, it is not a scene so much as a pause.
From there he expands the lens outward into public stakes, love, and values – chapters that argue for the full bandwidth of consequence. Public stakes matter only when anchored in a private core; otherwise they drift into abstraction, the language of causes and systems without human friction. Love, in his framing, is not sweetness but exposure. It raises the cost of every choice because it makes every choice a potential betrayal. Values are the bedrock that turns conflict into meaning. What does a character stand for? What do they choose against? What part of themselves will they sacrifice to remain who they claim to be?
It helps that Maass writes in a voice that refuses to whisper. The style is brisk, declarative, impatient with hedging. His sentences often sound like instructions delivered across a desk: stop explaining, stop protecting, stop making it easy. He does not indulge the romantic myth of the writer as delicate instrument. He writes like a professional who has seen too many competent drafts die of politeness. The tone can feel like a stern coach, but the sternness is purposeful. Maass is trying to dislodge a reader from the comfort of “good enough.”
Maass’s fondness for exercises is part of the book’s argument. He does not merely describe “fire” in the abstract; he repeatedly asks the reader to locate it, page by page, and to notice where it is missing. The prompts are often blunt in the Maass manner: name what your protagonist is ashamed of, decide what they will not admit, identify the moment a scene turns from safe to risky. At their best, these exercises feel less like homework and more like a flashlight. They do not supply answers, but they make avoidance visible, which is sometimes the more important gift.
He is also unusually attentive to the difference between motion and momentum. Many drafts, he suggests, mistake activity for urgency: characters travel, argue, investigate, flee, arrive. The prose stays busy. The reader stays cool. Maass’s revision stance is to ask what the activity costs. What does the character sacrifice to keep moving? What must they give up to obtain the next clue, the next confession, the next chance at love? This question is as useful for a quiet domestic scene as for a caper, which is one reason the book’s advice travels across genres more gracefully than its combustible title might imply.
At the same time, the book can over-rely on intensity as a universal solvent. Maass’s counsel often moves toward escalation: raise the stakes, sharpen the dilemma, make the choice harder, deepen the wound. For writers already prone to overwriting, or to scenes that strain for significance, the advice can tempt excess. The more nuanced reading is that Maass is not asking for bigger feelings, but for truer ones – feelings that are permitted to have consequences. The difference is subtle, and the book does not always pause long enough to teach it.
Still, the book’s obsession with heat can risk flattening the range of literary experience. Not every powerful novel announces itself as a blaze. Some books achieve their intensity by chill rather than flame, by the slow accrual of dread, by a cool intelligence that refuses overt heat. There is also a tradition of restraint that is not avoidance: the sentence that refuses to emote because the character cannot, the narrative distance that becomes its own moral stance, the quiet that is made unbearable precisely because nothing is said. Maass nods toward these possibilities, but the engine of the book prefers ignition to frost.
The chapter on uncertainty, however, complicates the caricature and reveals Maass at his most literary. Uncertainty, as he uses it, is not confusion; it is the refusal to resolve moral and emotional questions too quickly. It is the gap that invites the reader to participate. A story with fire is not necessarily a story with answers. Often it is a story that ends with ash: the recognition that loss has occurred, that the self cannot be restored, that love may not save anyone. In a culture that trains writers to soothe, Maass’s insistence on sustained uncertainty feels like permission to stop being polite.
The later chapters on symbols, premise, voice, and theme continue that movement from technique toward coherence. Symbols, he suggests, are not puzzles planted after the fact but resonant objects and images that naturally gather meaning when a story’s emotional logic is consistent. Premise is not a marketable hook but a condition that relentlessly tests the protagonist’s defenses. Voice is not ornament but attitude – the story’s stance toward its own events – and it cannot exist without stakes. Theme is not a message taped to the novel’s forehead; it is what the novel proves through consequence.
There is, however, a practical complaint that some writers will feel in their wrists as they turn the pages. “The Fire in Fiction” is not a step-by-step manual. Maass is strongest when he names a deficiency – neutrality, protected protagonists, scenes that merely exchange information – and weakest when the fix requires granular demonstration. He offers exercises and examples, but the method remains largely rhetorical: he convinces you that your pages must burn, then sends you back to the desk to discover how. For writers who crave scaffolding, this can feel like being told to build a house by being shown a photograph of one.
Yet even that limitation contains a kind of honesty. Maass is not pretending that revision is a checklist. He is arguing that the core difficulty is not ignorance of technique but avoidance of risk. The book keeps returning to the same unflattering questions: where, in your draft, are you being kind to your characters in order to spare yourself? Where are you explaining because you fear misunderstanding? Where are you choosing prettiness because you fear pain? Maass’s bluntness can be a nuisance, but it is also a kind of respect. He assumes you can bear the truth that your draft is safe because you are safe.
It is hard to deny the effect of the book on an attentive reader. “The Fire in Fiction” changes the way you look at paragraphs. It makes you suspicious of scenes that merely convey information. It makes you ask, with a certain mercilessness, what is at risk right now – what could go wrong, what is being withheld, what is being avoided, what it would cost to speak plainly. It invites you to revise not by beautifying but by tightening the screws. You begin to see that a scene can contain almost no plot and still be tense if two people want incompatible things and both are afraid to say so.
The book’s explicit emphasis on the writer’s courage clarifies what has been implicit all along. Maass’s true subject is not tension but self-protection. Writers soften consequences because they fear cruelty. They tidy endings because they fear ambiguity. They make protagonists likable because they fear judgment. They explain because they fear being misunderstood. “The Fire in Fiction” is a sustained argument against those reflexes. It asks for a different kind of generosity, one that trusts the reader with difficulty and trusts the characters with consequence.
That demand is invigorating and, at times, exhausting. A novel cannot be all climax. Not every scene can be a lit fuse. Life contains the ordinary, the repetitive, the apparently uneventful, and part of the art of fiction is making room for those textures without losing tension. Maass would argue, fairly, that the ordinary still contains stakes, that every moment contains a choice, a fear, a desire. He is right. But there is a point at which the injunction to never relax can begin to feel like an injunction to never breathe, and the book does not always offer a vocabulary for ease that is not surrender.
What saves him from dogma is his realism about cost. Fire is not a constant roar. It is the moment when something changes and cannot be undone. It is the quiet line that lands like a verdict. It is the pause after a betrayal. It is the scene that, on rereading, you realize could not have ended any other way because the character could not have remained who they were. In those moments, the book’s most radical instruction becomes clear: stop protecting the self you are writing. Let it be altered. Let it pay.
“The Fire in Fiction” is not the only craft book a serious writer needs, and it does not pretend to be. Its strength is not comprehensive coverage of technique but a fierce concentration on what technique is for. It is a book you return to when your draft is competent and dead, when your scenes behave and your characters behave and you cannot remember why you began. It reminds you that readers come to fiction for the experience of risk – not the risk of plot, necessarily, but the risk of being known.
In that spirit, it deserves a place on the shelf not as scripture but as catalyst. It will not write your sentences for you. It will, if you let it, make you less willing to accept sentences that do not matter. For that goading clarity, and for its insistence that craft is ultimately a form of emotional honesty, I would place it at 82 out of 100.
February 21, 2022
"Simply put, what the hell do you want to say to me? If I remember nothing else, what would you have me recall when I close your novel's covers? Having something to say, or something you wish us to experience, is what gives your novel its power. Identify it. Make it loud. Do not be afraid of what's burning in your heart. When it comes through on the page, you will be a true storyteller."
February 21, 2019
Exemplary as usual
This is an amazing book on the art of creating fiction. A great read. Every writer should have this book in their catalogue. Thank you for writing!
This is an amazing book on the art of creating fiction. A great read. Every writer should have this book in their catalogue. Thank you for writing!
Currently reading
November 22, 2025Rereading as I finish my WIP 2026
Okay, I have been collecting and reading and studying books on writing for many years now, and I want to be blunt and honest here. Donald Maas has the best damn books on writing that I have ever read and guess what, I am just now reading all of them!!!! I don't know how this happened. Maybe because he's an agent and went to fame over that book called Writing The Break-Out Novel, which I confess I totally dismissed. OMFG. Now decades later, I am weeping over the fact that Donald Maas has written the best damn books on writing fiction. He has the best exercises in ALL OF THEM. DO THEM. PAY ATTENTION. He's the one person who really makes you understand, very simply (and this is his gift) what writers need to do and gives small clever examples. Now, he's not going to tell you what is in Save The Cat or similar books. He is going to make a writer understand what it means to construct a good novel and how voice impacts that. How theme does. How TENSION does. He absolutely know what he is talking and all his books are filled with countless notes and post-its. Every writer needs support, they need passion for words, they need to understand techniques not as rules but tools. Writers need a tool box. He's the best. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED if you do the exercises.
Okay, I have been collecting and reading and studying books on writing for many years now, and I want to be blunt and honest here. Donald Maas has the best damn books on writing that I have ever read and guess what, I am just now reading all of them!!!! I don't know how this happened. Maybe because he's an agent and went to fame over that book called Writing The Break-Out Novel, which I confess I totally dismissed. OMFG. Now decades later, I am weeping over the fact that Donald Maas has written the best damn books on writing fiction. He has the best exercises in ALL OF THEM. DO THEM. PAY ATTENTION. He's the one person who really makes you understand, very simply (and this is his gift) what writers need to do and gives small clever examples. Now, he's not going to tell you what is in Save The Cat or similar books. He is going to make a writer understand what it means to construct a good novel and how voice impacts that. How theme does. How TENSION does. He absolutely know what he is talking and all his books are filled with countless notes and post-its. Every writer needs support, they need passion for words, they need to understand techniques not as rules but tools. Writers need a tool box. He's the best. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED if you do the exercises.
September 7, 2011
I’ll admit that I caved into buying this one because it was one of those books I suspected I should read and never really got around to picking up, but now Borders is going out of business and I figured well, what better time than now? So I bought it. And I read the first chapter. And I had a serious facepalm Why-did-I-wait-so-absurdly-long-to-read-this-book?-moment.
I mean it when I say my only regret was not reading The Fire in Fiction sooner. The advice is fantastic and the exercises at the end of the chapter are more useful than I can even describe. I haven’t done all of them yet, but I definitely will.
So if you’re looking for a good writing book, I highly recommend this one. It covers everything from deepening characters (yes, even your moustache-twirling antagonist) to writing interesting description to weaving tension throughout your prose. It’s a fantastic read, and one I intend to go through again with a highlighter or two.
I mean it when I say my only regret was not reading The Fire in Fiction sooner. The advice is fantastic and the exercises at the end of the chapter are more useful than I can even describe. I haven’t done all of them yet, but I definitely will.
So if you’re looking for a good writing book, I highly recommend this one. It covers everything from deepening characters (yes, even your moustache-twirling antagonist) to writing interesting description to weaving tension throughout your prose. It’s a fantastic read, and one I intend to go through again with a highlighter or two.
April 19, 2014
The Fire in Fiction offers a good amount of knowledge on improving one's writing from the perspective of a literary agent. The book covers 9 chapters:
Protagonists vs. Heroes
Characters Who Matter
Scenes That Can't Be Cut
The World of the Novel
A Singular Voice
Making the Impossible Real
Hyperreality
Tension All the Time
The Fire in Fiction
Maass provides plenty of examples from bestselling authors to support his points. Most of the advice in here isn't necessarily a "how to write", but larger ideas to apply to your own fiction writing. Maass provides Practical Tools Exercises after each chapter to work on and summarize the main points. This isn't the best writing book I've read, but it's worth checking out. And if there's only one take away I learned from this book it's to have something to say that is unique to you when you write.
Protagonists vs. Heroes
Characters Who Matter
Scenes That Can't Be Cut
The World of the Novel
A Singular Voice
Making the Impossible Real
Hyperreality
Tension All the Time
The Fire in Fiction
Maass provides plenty of examples from bestselling authors to support his points. Most of the advice in here isn't necessarily a "how to write", but larger ideas to apply to your own fiction writing. Maass provides Practical Tools Exercises after each chapter to work on and summarize the main points. This isn't the best writing book I've read, but it's worth checking out. And if there's only one take away I learned from this book it's to have something to say that is unique to you when you write.
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