Posts by Donald Maass

I once heard an editor describe commercial fiction as “potato chip reads”. Have you ever actually eaten a giant bag of potato chips? Afterward, did you feel sick? Not just sick to your stomach but also faintly empty in spirit?

Potato chip reads leave us feeling like that because they lack meaning. Now, that is not to say they lack theme. Plenty of genre novels have durable foundations: good versus evil, justice will be done, love conquers all. Even so they can leave us unsatisfied.

Meaning comes from a human journey. Fiction writers call this by lots of names: arc, change, transformation, redemption. Most manuscripts, though, either fail to send their characters on a true journey or reduce that journey to a few steps.

A true journey is not just all that we experience but how we understand it: our minds in nova, our hearts seeking peace. What is it that gives a journey the power to shake convictions, move hearts, connect humankind and leave readers feeling nostalgic for people who never actually lived?

Have you ever read an action packed thriller that left you breathless yet unmoved? Like a roller coaster, a thrilling ride but one that doesn’t seem to mean anything?

Conversely, have you ever read a literary novel that was fatty with emotional nuance but that couldn’t run ten yards if it tried? All talk and no movement, like a transcript of someone else’s therapy session?

If so you’ve experienced novels that have taken you on only half a journey.

A journey is not like a commute, merely getting from home to work. Nor is it like a tour, an itinerary to follow with sights to see. A journey is longer than a drive, less organized than a march, more personal than a migration, more purpose-driven than a ramble.

A journey needn’t involve travel but it does enact a transformation. For a transformation to occur, two things are needed: outward events and inward change.

Great novels use both. Novelists talk all the time about their characters’ “journeys” but in manuscripts I rarely feel like I’ve taken one. Usually one part or the other is valued, but not both. In fact, so fundamental is this dichotomy that it’s embodied in two terms taken for granted in our business: A novel is said be either “plot-driven” or “character-driven”.

Why not both?

Recently I was a guest in a movie star’s home in the Hollywood Hills. (Yeah I know, life as a literary agent is rough, isn’t it?) It was a many-acre fairy tale on some of the world’s most expensive real estate.

Secret paths led to private terraces. A party lawn seemed to host a ghost soiree in the moonlight. A painting studio had works in progress but no artist in evidence. It was like visiting the island of Phraxos in The Magus, the elusive master evident everywhere but nowhere in sight.

The movie star, you see, was not in residence.

All of which had me thinking about how character can be conjured without a character actually appearing (yet) on the page. Think of Rebecca in Daphne DuMaurier’s novel. Rebecca doesn’t appear at all but her presence looms powerfully throughout the story.

How do Fowles, DuMaurier and others conjure characters who haven’t walked on? There are two techniques: 1) physical evidence, 2) their impact on POV characters.

Is there a character in your current novel whose presence looms large, whose shadow is long, whose influence is far reaching, whose legacy is heavy or whose impact on your protagonist began in the past?

If so, why not try conjuring this character before they actually appear? Here are a few prompts to help…

Last month I looked at how tension emerges on the page when apparently nothing is happening. The inverse of that is when high action hits with bullets whining, cars careening and explosions mushrooming.

You’d think that high action would be the most riveting stuff in any novel, but strangely it often is easy to skim. C’mon, be honest. You’ve skimmed some action, haven’t you?

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of spending a day with Chi-Libris, a group of published authors of Christian fiction. Late in the day we tackled micro-tension. A participant offered a paragraph from a WIP in which a cougar carried a toddler across a stream (in its mouth, in case you were wondering), pursued by the story’s protagonist.

The passage was well written, visually clear—and not particularly scary. When I asked, “What do you think will happen next?” hardly anyone was stirred to speculate. I then asked, “How can we add tension?”

As I expected, most suggestions focused on making the cougar more menacing, raising the stakes (the toddler is a Senator’s child!), changing the protagonist’s actions, etc. No improvement. The outcome still didn’t matter to most.

Then came a suggestion that held the key to increasing tension: heighten the emotions of the point-of-view character. Even better, create conflicting emotions. Bingo. Suddenly the moment sprang to life. Both the interest level and uncertainty of the outcome spiraled up…

This post by agent Donald Maass officially kicks off our month of “best advice” here at WU. Enjoy!

Invisible Tension

Don’t you hate it? Literary authors get to write these beautiful passages that are poison in commercial novels. You know what I mean: those achingly gorgeous paragraphs in which absolutely nothing happens.

What’s worse, sometimes those passages are riveting reading. Makes you sick, doesn’t it? How do they get away with it? Who gave them a free pass? How are they able to indulge in all those pretty words when the rest of us have to keep the action slogging along with dirt-dull prose?

Are the rules different in literary fiction? Do readers have a taste for pretty little icky-gooey passages? Why can’t commercial writers shine? Gunshots are all well and good but can’t we use the occasional metaphor?

Actually, lots of inactive passages in literary fiction fall flat. (So do acres of action in commercial fiction, but that’s a different post.) When a literary novelist pulls one off they are doing something we can’t immediately see.

They are using invisible tension.

A Donald Maass definition: Micro-tension is the moment-by-moment, line-by-line, sometimes simmering-beneath-the-surface tension that keeps the reader in a constant state of apprehension about what will happen–not in the story but in the next few seconds. It’s what makes any book a page turner.

When nothing seems to be happening and we’re reading with close attention then there still is something happening; it’s just under the surface or, to be more precise, inside the point of view character. Call it sub-text. Call it art. Whatever you name it, it’s based in conflicting or contrasting emotions. Even when “invisible” they’re still there.

Here’s a random excerpt from the middle of Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham’s novel The Hours, which is the intertwined stories of three women in contemporary New York, 1950’s New York and….well, Virginia Wolf. Here Virginia pauses before entering a social gathering. She’s been thinking about the suicide of Clarissa Dalloway in a novel she’s writing:

I wonder if the researchers at the University of Pennsylvania who studied why certain articles in The New York Times online are e-mailed more frequently realize that they’ve unlocked for fiction writers the ultimate code: what creates word of mouth. Thanks, guys.

So far in this series I’ve discussed character strength, evoking high emotion, story scale and awe…which is to say, giving the reader (or really, your characters) new ways of seeing, feeling, believing and understanding themselves and the world. Lift your readers out of themselves and they’ll talk others into making the journey. Oh, it sounds so easy.

Yeah, well.

Let’s dig into a subject I glossed a bit: scale. One commenter asked plaintively whether it’s necessary to write a multi-POV novel. Of course it’s not. It’s just that readers respond powerfully to a sense of vastness, a depth and sweep, being transported, journeying far and yet feeling at home. It may be easier to evoke all that with multiple points of view.

Then again, that by itself is not the whole trick. To create a true sense of scale, every characters’ storyline must be equally absorbing.

Last fall I had the privilege of co-teaching day long workshops with award-winning mystery writer Nancy Pickard and best selling women’s fiction author Susan Wiggs. With each, I did a scene-by-scene breakdown of a recent out-of-category novel. For Nancy it was The Virgin of Small Plains; for Susan it was Summer Cottage. Susan’s novel had sixty-four total scenes. Nancy’s is a past/present story told in seventy-three scenes.

But here’s the thing: Both Nancy and Susan each used just three principle points of view. One of those carried most of load. The character Abby in The Virgin of Small Plains had 40% of the scenes; Sarah in Summer Cottage had a little more than 50% of the scenes.

Still, what gave those novels their sense of scale was the completeness and depth of the storylines involving the other characters.

In Susan’s novel, the love interest Will has eighteen POV scenes all to himself and several problems with which to contend, not least of which is his troubled teenage daughter, Aurora, who herself has twelve scenes. In Nancy’s novel, the characters Rex and Mitch both have fifteen scenes. (There are sixteen further scenes from other points of view.)

If this sounds like a simple formula-Hey kiddies, all you need are three points of view, one dominant, two secondary, then write sixty-plus scenes, et voila!-it isn’t that simple. In Susan and Nancy’s books those extra POV characters are highly compelling and their storylines are not simple. No scenes are filler.

So, how do you make sure that a given secondary character has enough storyline to justify their existence and fill a dozen or more scenes? Here are a few steps to get you started:

My post last month sprang from research at the University of Pennsylvania into what causes online readers of The New York Times to e-mail articles to friends. Those researchers have done fiction writers a huge favor. They have decoded what generates word of mouth.

The most important finding regards what inspires in the reader a feeling of awe. The researchers defined awe as an “emotion of self-transcendence, a feeling of admiration and elevation in the face of something greater than the self.” Stories that inspire awe have two important dimensions: 1) Their scale is large, and 2) they require of readers “mental accommodation”, meaning they force the reader to view the world in a different way.

Now, I know that some of you right now are racing to congratulate yourselves. My book is long! It’s multi-POV! I’m good on that scale thing. And hey, I rock my readers’ world view! They’ll be shaken to the core!

Oh yeah? When was the last time you read a manuscript or published novel that left you literally shaken to the core? Some time ago?

My point.

Let’s first talk about the reality of scale. High story impact does not come from length alone. It occurs when every character in a novel embarks on a profound journey and every plot layer and sub-plot becomes a novel unto itself. Most novelists don’t work that hard. How do I know? Same way you do. I read the results.

To write on an awe-inspiring scale demands not supreme commitment (everyone with a complete manuscript has that) but the commitment to craft every piece of a novel’s thousands of components with high artistry. That’s work. And that’s the easy part.

The greater challenge is to pull readers into alternate ways of looking at things. This can only be accomplished through characters. First, the reader must bond with them. (See last month’s post.) Next, the character must himself or herself have a unique way of looking at the world.

It’s no wonder, then, that so many commercially successful protagonists are forensic experts, snipers, underwater salvage specialists, surgeons, scientists or vampires. Even a made-up profession like symbologist can involve us in an alternate world view. See the current New York Times best seller list.

But it’s not just about a protagonist with a cool job. Plenty of ordinary people also can capture us. Again, look on the current Times list. There are best sellers about suburban parents, a Southern daughter, a front line soldier in Vietnam, and a seventeen-year-old. Okay, I’ll admit that there’s also Abraham Lincoln (hunting vampires) but you see my point.

Any protagonist with strong opinions, deep convictions, tidal emotions and profound self-regard can transport us out of ourselves as effectively as a Nephilim-fighting nun. But again, it’s work. How to do it? Here are practical tools to help. Ready?

Who spreads stories and why? Sociologists at the University of Pennsylvania have been studying data provided by The New York Times showing which of the paper’s articles are the most often e-mailed.

Their conclusions have some relevance for fiction writers because they reveal what it is about stories that probably generate word of mouth. This month and next I’m going to discuss these elements and show how you can apply them in your novels.

The first element is one that will be obvious to most of us, so let’s cover it right away. Positive articles are e-mailed more often than negative ones. What does that mean for novelists? It means that excitement is more likely to be stirred by characters with positive qualities and by stories with happy endings.

No big surprise, like I said. If your characters are dark, miserable and self-loathing you can’t expect readers to be enthusiastic. Qualities of strength, especially when we see them right away, inspire readers to care. Downer endings also narrow a novel’s appeal. But you already knew that, right?

The next element identified by researchers is a little harder to appropriate. More frequently e-mailed stories tend to be emotional.

Stop. I know exactly what you’re thinking. All riiight! My novel-in-progress is highly emotional! Best-seller list here I come!

Not so fast.

Agent Donald Maass is here today to kick off our month long discussion on Voice.
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Voice…or Volume?

Voice in fiction is a term poorly defined. What does it mean? Style? Subject matter? Sensibility? World view? All of the above? Whatever it means editors, agents and readers all want it.

The thing is, every novelist already has a voice. It may be comic, deadpan, dry, pulpy, shrill, objective, distant, intimate, arty or a thousand other things. It comes through in the story that an author chooses to tell and the way in which they choose to tell it.

Why then do editors constantly say to me they are seeking writers with a “voice.” Aren’t they already getting that?

Clearly not—not enough of that, anyway. Attached to the word “voice,” I frequently hear the adjective “strong.” Editors are looking for authors with a “strong voice.”

Ah.

The issue in most manuscripts, then, is not whether the author has a voice but whether they are using it to maximum effect. Does the language of the novel light it up? Does the story stab our hearts? Does its passion grip us? Do we see the world in new ways?

The answer in many, many cases is no. Beginners write timidly; but then, so can those who’ve spent a while knocking at the door. Advanced beginners sometime write what they believe the market wants, not what is original, personal, authentic and passionate.

Published authors have their problems with voice too. Did you ever suspect that a favorite author has begun to imitate himself? Then you know what I mean.

So how can you make sure your voice is getting through? Speak up. Louder. Insist on being heard. Writing safe means writing small. I’m pretty sure the storyteller inside you has a lot to say. How are you going to make sure we hear you say it?

Photo courtesy Flickr’s suneko

Bigness by Donald Maass

What makes a novel feel big?

It isn’t a function of length, setting or theme. Some of the smallest manuscripts I’ve read were the longest. War stories and epic sagas don’t necessarily have much to say. Universal themes—love conquers all, for instance—can be familiar and flat.

Bigness arises in other ways. A microcosmic world portrayed in detail can feel bigger than its boundaries. A less obvious insight can strike us with the force of truth. The eyes of a simpleton can show us humanity’s infinite variety.

All those things are so, yet the novels which illustrate those principles can be one time accidents. For professional novelists the challenge is to create fiction that feels big every time. For commercial novelists, that can mean every year. Are there guidelines to help?