Posts by Donald Maass

Do you believe in vampires? No, seriously. You don’t, right?

Here’s a different question: Do you read vampire novels? Whether or not you do, a great many readers enjoy them. To do so they suspend their disbelief. They must. How do authors get them to do that?

The same question can be asked about novels in which justice is done, love triumphs and lone protagonists save the world. In real life those things don’t always happen, or at least not easily and despite the high odds posed in a well-plotted novel. Even character-driven stories such as sagas, coming-of-age novels, women’s and literary fiction portray events that are not everyday occurrences.

What happens in all fiction is to some degree preposterous and yet readers go along. Or not.

Have you ever felt that a novel you were reading got ridiculous? When fiction feels far-fetched we cease to enjoy it; indeed, we may even hurl it across the room. Then again, there are those novels in which the very premise defies logic and yet we breathlessly turn the pages.

How do those authors pull that off?

There are times when setting itself may participate in the story. Blizzards, droughts and other natural phenomena are obvious ways to make the setting active. Are there more? Certainly. One of them is to find in your setting specific places that have extra, even magical, significance or where events recur.

I’m talking about those spots that are legendary. For example, in your hometown was there a quarry-turned-swimming hole where boys tested their nerve, girls lost their virginity and the cops regularly busted pot heads or fished bodies from the water?

Such a place was legendary in your home town, no? What about where you live now? What’s the spot that everyone knows but isn’t on any tour? That too is a legendary place.

Now, what about the setting of your story? What particular spot in your novel’s landscape can have that kind of mythical significance? Give that understanding to your characters and—voila! That piece of the place then becomes a character in itself…even more so if several story events take place there.

This was an excerpt from The Fire in Fiction: Passion, Purpose and Techniques to Make Your Novel Great by Donald Maass. In his new book, New York literary agent Donald Maass illuminates the techniques of master contemporary novelists. Some authors write powerhouse novels every time. What are they doing differently on the page? Maass not only explains, he shows you how you can right away use the techniques of greatness in your current manuscript.

A literary agent in New York, Donald Maass’s agency sells more than 150 novels every year to major publishers in the U.S. and overseas. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004) and The Fire in Fiction (2009). He is a past president of the Association of Authors’ Representatives, Inc.

You can order The Fire in Fiction online, and learn more about it from the publisher.

Is there a difference between a protagonist and a hero? A protagonist is the subject of a story. A hero is a human being of extraordinary qualities. A protagonist can be a hero, certainly, but isn’t always. Quite often in manuscripts the protagonist is an ordinary person. They may face extraordinary circumstances in the course of the story but when we first meet them they, in effect, could be you or me.

That early, introductory moment is where many authors begin to lose me. Why? Meeting a protagonist who is a proxy for me, with whom I can readily identify, should be ideal, shouldn’t it? Isn’t that how sympathy arises? I see myself in the novel’s focal character and, therefore, their experience becomes mine? Actually, it doesn’t work quite like that. A reader’s heart does not automatically open just because some average schlemiel stumbles across the page.

Whether they are public figures or just ordinary in profile, our heroes and heroines are people whose actions inspire us. We would not mind spending ten straight hours or even ten days with them. That is important because ten hours is about how long it takes to read a novel and ten days a not uncommon period of time that readers commit to a single book. When it is your book, what sort of protagonist do you want your readers to meet? One whom they will regard more-or-less as they do a fellow grocery shopper?