Mo Maass

Wednesdays are dedicated to posts related to the craft of writing, so for your viewing enjoyment today, more quotes from the fabulous book pictured over there to the right:

Chapter 4 -- Time and Place

• "How does your setting make people feel? That is the key, not how a place looks but its psychological effect on the characters..."
• "You can deepen the psychology of place in your story by returning to a previously established setting and showing how your character's perception of it has changed."
• [...for making place an active character, you can try:] "...marking your characters' growth (or decline) through their relationships to their various surroundings."
• "...go inside your characters and allow them a moment to discover their feelings about the place into which you have delivered them...[this] demands that you be writing in a strong point of view..."
• "As important in a story as a sense of place is a sense of time..."
• "Setting can also be social context. Social trends and political ideas influence our real actions and thinking..."
• "Your characters live in society, but in which strata? At what point is their social position most keenly felt? At what moment does it change?"
• "A setting cannot live unless it is observed in its pieces and particulars."

So, how's the writing project(s) coming along?

Wednesday Writing Goodies

If you're looking for a beautiful little magazine to read, subscribe or submit to, be sure to "surf" (hehe) over to OCEAN Magazine. Publisher Diane Buccheri's mission for the publication is to celebrate and protect our oceanic environments. Lovely photography, poetry, prose and essays fill the pages between covers. The website says, "OCEAN is an eclectic blend of the informative and educational, personal, spiritual and sensual. OCEAN draws its inspiration from love, with beauty." There's a blog, a storefront, photos and lots of

good stuff to browse. You can also view the pub online for a nominal fee.

For those of you working on manuscripts, check out this blog post full of Word doc tips at The Blood-Red Pencil.

And for the poets amongst us, you'll enjoy some fine reading on the same topic at RATTLE.

A few more Donald Maass quotes from Writing the Breakout Novel, Chapter 3, "Stakes":

• "If there is one single principle that is central to making any store more powerful, it is simply this: Raise the stakes."
• "Can you point to the exact pages in which the stakes escalate, locking your protagonist into his course of action with less hope of success than before?"
• "To put a principled person at risk is to raise the stakes in your story to a high degree. Better still is to test that individual's principles to the utmost."
• "...a combination of high public stakes and deep personal stakes is the most powerful engine a breakout novel can have."
• "Plot problems and the yearnings of your characters do not come from nowhere; they come from you."

What are you currently reading, and how is it?

Wednesday Writing -- Donald Maass Notes

Today, writing bloggy friends, we have some good insights into novel writing from Donald Maass' book, "Writing the Breakout Novel." Hope you find them illuminating.

• "[Breakout novels] change us because their authors are willing to draw upon their deepest selves without flinching. They hold nothing back, making their novels the deepest possible expressions of their own experience and beliefs."


• "The key ingredients that I look for in a...premise are (1) plausibility, (2) inherent conflict, (3) originality and (4) gut emotional appeal."


• Plausibility = "Could that really happen? (Like the best lies...a breakout premise has a grain of truth.) It invokes questions, draws us deeper."


• Inherent Conflict = "If the milieu of the story is not only multifaceted but also involves opposing factions or points of view, then you have a basis for strong, difficult-to-resolve conflict."


• Originality = "It is essential to find a fresh angle...Is it [your premise] truly a fresh look at your subject, a perspective that on one else buy you can bring to it?"


• "If there is one single principle that is central to making any story more powerful, it is simply this: Raise the stakes."


• "...a combination of high public stakes and deep personal stakes is the most powerful engine a breakout novel can have."

And speaking of writers and writing, hop on over to Kimmi's cool blog (the one featuring her soon-to-be-released-book The Unbreakable Child), and enter her contest. Winner gets a really cool prize on February 8th!