The Fire in Fiction: Book Review

Donald Maass is a master. I think a lot of people have long since agreed on that. He’s seen a lot of great and not-so-great books go by, and he’s learned to see the differences. I’ve been meaning to get my hands on his books for a VERY long time. (Fun fact–I once DID get my hands on Writing the Breakout Novel, and bought it. I was on my way to lunch with a friend when I stopped by the bookstore for a minute, and an hour later in a fit of generosity I loaned the book to my friend before I’d done more than glance at it. I never saw the book again, and shortly thereafter lost track of that friend. Coincidence? I think not.)

I’m trying to do more of the things on my “do this someday” list, since “someday” doesn’t seem to be showing up and I do still want to do those things. So when I was on Amazon with a gift card looking to splurge, The Fire in Fiction jumped into my cart.

There is no great secret in the Fire in Fiction. No magic formula, no chants to make your book un-put-downable. Maass presents no new and ground-shaking revelations. The advice is to make your characters breathe, bring your setting to life, and so on and so forth. What I found different, though, was that he told how to do these things, in ways that make sense to me. He included lots of examples of how other writers had done these things, and gave excellent thoughts on how to do them myself.

Mostly in writing books I skip over the exercises. I look at them, roll my eyes, and move on. I wanted to do–and will take the time, when I’m not on deadline, to do–Maass’ exercises, and my writing will be the better for it. Not to mention I think it will be fun.

I can see myself editing with this book in hand. Not because applying it will be complicated, but because I don’t want to miss the smallest thing. I was very impressed with this book. Can’t remember the last time I stayed up late reading nonfiction!

TL;DR Get it. Read it. Use it.

In other news, Captain’s Boy is still awesome and priced at $3.99 for the ebook (or…). Knight Errant is awesome too, for that matter, and it’s still 99¢.

In other other news, my cat is black, not transparent, and sitting between me and my monitor. Oh, now he’s moved and he’s knocking stuff off my desk by loving on it. Sigh.

Onward!