A Breakout Journey

I’m thrilled to have a guest blog gig at PFS on the third Wednesday of every month. When Cyndi D’Alba invited me, she asked what theme I wanted to use. At my other blogs, I write whatever interests me -- almost always something to do with writing or the writing life or books. But I didn’t have to think of what I would do here. I knew.

One of my favorite writing books is Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook by Donald Maass. I’ve read it at least three times, but I’ve never done the exercises at the end of each chapter. Writers who have taken his weekend-long workshops have raved about how much they’ve learned and how much better their books are. The exercises Maass took them through opened up new ideas and possibilities.

I’ve been having a hard time writing my wip, mostly because I keep stopping and starting to do promotion for the American Title V contest. For months, the contest has been on my mind instead of my wip. The contest is worth it, and I’m not complaining. I already know how to get my writing mojo back. I’m going to conduct my own breakout workshop by doing the exercises on the back of every chapter of Maass’s Workbook. When I’m finished going through all 34 chapters, I should know the characters better than I know myself and the plot better than my own life journey.

So that’s my theme. Once a month, on the third Wednesday of each month, I’ll blog about what I took from each chapter, and then talk about the one question at the end of each chapter that resonated most with me.

My original plan was to summarize a chapter and ask Maass’s questions at the chapter’s end. But my CP, Michelle Diener, said even though I was urging everyone to buy his book (the urge is coming!), asking every question could be copyright infringement.

Here’s my urge: If you don’t own this workbook, buy it. Maass uses examples from published breakout books in the chapters, and his explanations are motivating and instructive. There’s a reason why writers love this book, and that’s because it’s so good.

If you already own the book and have done the exercises, I hope you’ll stop by and share what you've learned. Or else consider this a time to renew your knowledge and use it on your wip.

If there’s ever a time to read the breakout novel, it’s now. In the book’s Introduction, Maass said because of changes in the publishing business he saw that opportunities and sales were shrinking for most writers. But not all. Many writers were getting ahead. He studied their work and wrote the results in his 2001 book, Writing the Breakout Novel.

He used the information with his own clients, and said “The results have been dramatic. Stalled careers have been turned around, agency revenue is way up, and many clients tell me that they are writing with new joy.”

He started his weekend workshops on Writing the Breakout Novel, which led to the Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook. He says, “Writing a breakout novel is the hardest work you will ever do. But it can be done, and done by anyone with basic fiction writing skills and the patience and determination to take his fiction all the way to the highest level of achievement.”

One writing problem I’ve worked on is putting tension on every page. For the last two years, I have "RAISE THE STAKES" taped on my computer. Maass pounds this into the reader. He pounds everything in.

What’s the biggest problem with writing that you need to work on? If you don't have any now, what was a problem you had before and how did you turn it around?

And if you haven’t voted this round on the American Title contest, please take a moment and vote for your favorite.