The Breakout Novelist

Take your fiction to the next level! Maybe you're a first-time novelist looking for practical guidance. Maybe you've already been published, but your latest effort is stuck in mid-list limbo. Whatever the case may be, author and literary agent Donald Maass can show you how to take your prose to the next level and write a breakout novel - one that rises out of obscurity and hits the best-seller lists. Maass details the elements that all breakout novels share - regardless of genre - then shows you writing techniques that can make your own books stand out and succeed in a crowded marketplace. You'll learn to: • establish a powerful and sweeping sense of time and place • weave subplots into the main action for a complex, engrossing story • create larger-than-life characters that step right off the page • explore universal themes that will interest a broad audience of readers • sustain a high degree of narrative tension from start to finish • develop an inspired premise that sets your novel apart from the competition Then, using examples from the recent works of several best-selling authors - including novelist Anne Perry - Maass illustrates methods for upping the ante in every aspect of your novel writing. You'll capture the eye of an agent, generate publisher interest and lay the foundation for a promising career.

The all-inclusive guide for novel writers If you're serious about making your fiction vibrant, engaging, and marketable, you've found the right book. The Breakout Novelist gives you the craft and business know-how you need to make your book stand out. Inside, veteran agent Donald Maass brings together the most innovative and practical information from his workshops and previous books to lead you through every aspect of setting your novel apart from the rest. Maass shares examples from contemporary writers across all genres to equip you with the strategies great writers use to craft great fiction - from core fiction-writing elements like character, setting, description, and plot, to more advanced techniques including point of view, voice, and suspense. Plus, you'll find over 70 practical exercises to help you move your writing from blah to breakout. You'll also learn from Maass' experiences over more than three decades in the publishing industry. Get straight talk from an insider about agents, contracts, how the industry is changing, and how to be the kind of author who builds a successful career book after book. Get the best of Maass' expertise and instruction in one easy-to-use reference.

The all-inclusive guide for novel writers If you're serious about making your fiction vibrant, engaging, and marketable, you've found the right book. The Breakout Novelist gives you the craft and business know-how you need to make your book stand out. Inside, veteran agent Donald Maass brings together the most innovative and practical information from his workshops and previous books to lead you through every aspect of setting your novel apart from the rest. Maass shares examples from contemporary writers across all genres to equip you with the strategies great writers use to craft great fiction - from core fiction-writing elements like character, setting, description, and plot, to more advanced techniques including point of view, voice, and suspense. Plus, you'll find over 70 practical exercises to help you move your writing from blah to breakout. You'll also learn from Maass' experiences over more than three decades in the publishing industry. Get straight talk from an insider about agents, contracts, how the industry is changing, and how to be the kind of author who builds a successful career book after book. Get the best of Maass' expertise and instruction in one easy-to-use reference.

Make Your Novel Stand Out from the Crowd! Noted literary agent and author Donald Maass has done it again! His previous book, Writing the Breakout Novel, offered novelists of all skill levels and genres insider advice on how to make their books rise above the competition and succeed in a crowded marketplace. Now, building on the success of its predecessor, Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook calls that advice into action! This powerful book presents the patented techniques and writing exercises from Maass's popular writing workshops to offer novelists first-class instruction and practical guidance. You'll learn to develop and strengthen aspects of your prose with sections on: • Building plot layers • Creating inner conflict • Strengthening voice and point of view • Discovering and heightening larger-than-life character qualities • Strengthening theme • And much more! Maass also carefully dissects examples from real-life breakout novels so you'll lean how to read and analyze fiction like a writer. With authoritative instruction and hands-on workbook exercises, Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook is one of the most accessible novel-writing guides available. Set your work-in progress apart from the competition and write your own breakout novel today!

Told in letters, poems, text messages, news stories, and comics--a series of documents Nora collects for the Wolf Creek Community Time Capsule Project--Breakout is a thrilling story that will leave readers thinking about who's really welcome in the places we call home. Nora Tucker is looking forward to summer vacation in Wolf Creek--two months of swimming, popsicles, and brushing up on her journalism skills for the school paper. But when two inmates break out of the town's maximum security prison, everything changes. Doors are locked, helicopters fly over the woods, and police patrol the school grounds. Everyone is on edge, and fear brings out the worst in some people Nora has known her whole life. Even if the inmates are caught, she worries that home might never feel the same. A Mighty Girl Best Book of the Year

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.

Capture the minds, hearts, and imaginations of 21st century readers! Whether you're a commercial storyteller or a literary novelist, whether your goal is to write a best-selling novel or captivate readers with a satisfying, beautifully written story, the key to success is the same: high-impact fiction. Writing 21st Century Fiction will help you write a novel for today's readers and market, filled with rich characters, compelling plots, and resonant themes. Author and literary agent Donald Maass shows you how to: • Create fiction that transcends genre, conjures characters who look and feel more "real" than real people, and shows readers the work around them in new ways. • Infuse every page with an electric current of emotional appeal and micro-tension. • Harness the power of parallels, symbols, metaphors, and more to illuminate your novel in a lasting way. • Develop a personalized method of writing that works for you. With an arsenal of thought-provoking prompts and questions, plus plenty of examples from best-selling titles, Writing 21st Century Fiction will strip away your preconceived notions about writing in today's world and give you the essential tools you need to create fiction that will leave both readers and critics in awe.

“BREAKOUT is a thrilling, action-packed ride that is guaranteed to keep your heart pumping and the pages turning!” - Kim Chance, author of the Keeper & Seeker series Six days. That’s the amount of time until Lezah’s execution. She’ll die never knowing what got her locked up in that godforsaken prison in the first place. Her only chance of survival is to escape. Except the monitoring bracelet that digs into her wrist, the roaming AI, and the implant in her neck make freedom close to impossible. Her best chance is to team up with the four other inmates who are determined to break out, even if one of them is beyond gorgeous, annoying—oh, and in for murder. But he has a secret of his own. One that could break Lezah if she finds out, but could also set him free. Figuring out how to work with him and the rest of this mismatched group of criminals is the only way Lezah will survive to see the outside world again. But nothing in this prison is as it seems. And no one.