THE ICE PICK

Writing the Breakout Novel and Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook, by Donald Maass. Cincinnati, Writer’s Digest Books. $19.99 each. Text includes: chapter checklists & index. Workbook includes: exercises & index. ISBN: 0-89879-995-3; Wkbk 1-58297-263-x.

When I saw these two books, I thought of Evan Marshall’s Marshall Plan for Novel Writing with its workbook (reviewed April 2004) and wondered if this was the newest way for agents to make a little money on the side.

But where Marshall’s books are aimed at the beginner or the author who is stuck and needs help to get going again, Maass’s are for the more advanced writer who has already completed a manuscript and wants to improve it.

"When novelists whose previous work merely has been admired suddenly have books vault onto the best-seller lists or even achieve a large jump in sales, publishing people say they have ‘broken out.’ The book in question is a ‘breakout novel.’" Breakout novels can be in any genre, though Maass says they are generally complex, highly detailed, and often long.

Because, according to Maass, "readers love a layered, high-stakes story about sympathetic characters who have problems with which anyone can identify," for a breakout novel you need to add layers to your plot and depth to your characters, complicate matters in unpredictable ways while keeping the plot plausible, and escalate the stakes to compound your characters’ problems. "Being nice" to characters "does not engender drama."

More than description, worldbuilding in a breakout novel is "bringing people alive in a place and time that are alive." You need "milieu, period, fashion, ideas, human outlook, historical moment, spiritual mood and more." And Maass explains how each of these impacts your setting, plot, and characters.

"It is a common fault of beginning thriller writers to slam an Everyman, your average Joe, into the middle of something big and terrible. Such stories usually feel lackluster because the main character is lackluster." Maass discusses how you can build a cast of characters that are dynamic and memorable.

In the chapters on plot, he explains how to use the five basic plot elements to make your "conflict deeper, richer, more layered, more unavoidable and more inescapably true." And he discusses the contemporary trends toward narrowing viewpoint, nonlinear narrative, character-driven novels, self-discovery journeys, and the need to invest every page with tension, as well as the difficulties in using multiple viewpoint, building subplots, improving pacing, and finding your distinctive voice.

Writing a breakout novel "demands an adventurous spirit . . . willing to experiment, reverse direction, throw out large chunks of manuscript, add length . . . do whatever it takes to wrestle the many interwoven elements of a large-scale novel into shape. . . . In midmanuscript a breakout novelist can feel lost, overwhelmed by possible scenes and the challenge of tying up every thread."

When that happens, Maass says, "Do not panic. Trust the structure of your outline; or if you are an organic writer who works in successive drafts, trust your unconscious mind."

"You are," says Maass, "in control of your success or failure. . . . Your destiny is in your own hands." Uh-huh, we say. But Maass believes "it is possible for a writer to understand, at least in part, the mechanics of the breakout novel and to apply these devices to his writing. . . . It demands that an author reach deep inside to find out what is truthful, original, important and inspiring in his own world view . . . [and] requires that the author be true to his own ‘voice.’"

For first-time novelists, he says, "the high failure rate of first manuscripts happens simply because a novel is a large, complex, fluid and difficult-to-manage undertaking. . . . This book," he promises, "can show you not only how to manage the various aspects of your first novel but also how to give them more power."

Well, maybe. Most of us try to improve our writing each time we start a new project or revise an old one, but we are often lost in knowing what to do or how to do it. And although I thought the book was superior to most how-to-writes and planned to review it, the lessons seemed, to me, to be fairly difficult to apply.

The workbook changed my mind completely. I became excited as I began working through the exercises and applying them both to my completed manuscript and to one in progress.

I can almost always find a few lessons in any good how-to-write book that will help me. Sometimes I find a lot of good advice. And then, but rarely, a wonderful book brimming with practical help comes along that gets me zooming back to my own work, full of ideas and wanting to try them out. Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook is one of them.

And as Maass says, "Even if you absorb and use only a few of the techniques discussed herein, you will already be ahead of the game."

The text is best, in my opinion, when used with the workbook, but if you can afford only one, get the workbook.

Very highly recommended.

{Published in SF and Fantasy Workshop Newsletter, Oct. 2004.}