Hello folks,
The Kindle edition of Donald Maass's The Emotional Craft of Fiction is on sale for $1.99 at Amazon at the moment, at least in the US. This book is frequently recommended around here, so some of you might find this news interesting.
I've read the book myself, and found it has some good insights and good exercises. If you're a new fiction writer who has never read a book on craft, I'd recommend Stein on Writing first (there's a review linked in my signature), as it's more general and basic, but Maass is worth a read and certainly worth $1.99.
One thing newer writers might find helpful is a discussion of a type of writing that is neither showing nor telling; it is showing one thing for the purpose of conveying something else. In this case the something else is subtle emotional content that the reader infers from what is going on in the scene, but is not conveyed by telling ("sadness overwhelmed her") or showing ("tears welled in her eyes"). Maass talks about how to deliver an emotional experience to your readers. The book is really all about the crucial idea that your job as an author is not so much to describe your character's emotions as it is to evoke an emotional response in the reader.
Anyway, certainly worth the price of a cup of
The Kindle edition of Donald Maass's The Emotional Craft of Fiction is on sale for $1.99 at Amazon at the moment, at least in the US. This book is frequently recommended around here, so some of you might find this news interesting.
I've read the book myself, and found it has some good insights and good exercises. If you're a new fiction writer who has never read a book on craft, I'd recommend Stein on Writing first (there's a review linked in my signature), as it's more general and basic, but Maass is worth a read and certainly worth $1.99.
One thing newer writers might find helpful is a discussion of a type of writing that is neither showing nor telling; it is showing one thing for the purpose of conveying something else. In this case the something else is subtle emotional content that the reader infers from what is going on in the scene, but is not conveyed by telling ("sadness overwhelmed her") or showing ("tears welled in her eyes"). Maass talks about how to deliver an emotional experience to your readers. The book is really all about the crucial idea that your job as an author is not so much to describe your character's emotions as it is to evoke an emotional response in the reader.
Anyway, certainly worth the price of a cup of
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