The Emotional Craft of Fiction, Donald Maass

Have you ever read a book that was so wonderful that you wished you could commit it all to memory right away?

I felt that way as I read Donald Maass’ The Emotional Craft of Fiction. Not only were the concepts he wrote about fascinating, but his writing is so easy to read. I just flew through the book reading it cover to cover over the course of a weekend — and I’m normally a slow reader!

Maass starts off the book with a revelatory way of thinking about emotion in fiction and then carries this concept on throughout the entire book.

“The most useful question is not how can I get across what characters are going through? The better question is how can I get readers to go on an emotional journey of their own?”

And so, throughout the book Maass teaches the author-reader of his book to do just that — to get their readers to not just experience the emotions of the characters, but to put those emotions in the context of their own lives. When they do, not only will they understand and feel those emotions more acutely, but they’ll remember the book and allow it to truly touch them, possibly even to make a difference in their lives.

Maass goes into a great deal of detail, obviously, but broadly, he touches on Showing, Telling, Setting, Characters, and even on the author…