Donald Maass is the founder of the Donald Maass Literary
Agency, an agency for professional novelists. His pioneering work and writing
about the development of fiction careers has made DMLA a leading agency for
fiction writers. Together, the DMLA agents represent more than 150 novelists
and sell more than 100 novels every year to leading publishers in the U.S. and
overseas. Donald is the author of The
Career Novelist, Writing the Breakout
Novel, Writing the Breakout Novel
Workbook, and The Fire in Fiction.
He is a past president of the Association of Authors' Representatives, Inc.
(AAR).
Your theme this
conference has been about fiction in the 21st century and how, in order to stand
out in today's abundance of entertainment, we must write 'page-turners.' In
that vein, can you summarize the main issues you see with submissions?
Two problems are universal and they're not genre-specific. I
see these problems from beginning writers as well as published authors. First,
there's no reason to particularly care about the protagonist when we meet them.
Second, there's a lack of line-by-line micro-tension.
When you start reading a manuscript with these problems, you
can say the opening is slow or there's too much backstory or it's starting in
the wrong place. You can tell the writer to tighten it up or cut material,
which can be useful advice. But there are plenty of books that start slow,
start with backstory, start with "arriving in town," and they work. Why? What's the difference? Well,
it's because there's tension.
You use the term
'micro-tension' to describe line-by-line tension within a manuscript. What is micro-tension
and how can it be built?
Micro-tension is the unease that you create in the mind of
the reader. You build a mild state of anxiety and the only way the reader can
relieve this feeling is to read the next line on the page. So think of a
manuscript as a chain of tension followed by tension...
"Tension" sounds drastic, but it can be simmering
under the surface, it can be questions raised or false confidence, it can be so
many different things. The Fire in
Fiction contains an entire discussion (Chapter 8) on building tension and
how it works--how a writer can make a riveting passage when absolutely nothing is happening.
The foundation to creating tension is the point-of-view
character, whether writing in 1st-person or 3rd-person narrative. The reader
experiences a scene through the point-of-view character's senses, mind, and heart.
To build tension, the writer works with the conflicting and contrasting
emotions within this character. Whether writing action, exposition, interior
monologue, or dialogue, you create discord, unbalance, or uncertainty within
that character. In dialogue, you build friction or struggle--something between characters. When you
do all of this consistently, line by line, you get a page-turner. You get a
book that people can't stop reading.
You gave us a great
exercise for increasing the micro-tension in our manuscripts during
"Writing 21st Century Fiction."
Once you understand the principles of micro-tension, toss up
your manuscript page by page and let it fall about. Get those pages mixed up.
After your manuscript is in random order, go through and find a way to add
micro-tension on each page, at least once.
What I forgot to mention during the workshop was the reason
you can't read your pages in order. You'll get into the flow of your story,
you'll start enjoying the rich conflict and tension that's in your mind but, unfortunately, not on the page. It's important to
look at each page outside of its context and concentrate upon it in isolation.
Once you understand micro-tension and start to practice it,
it'll get easier. You'll find that you're putting it into your first drafts.
You'll feel dissatisfied when there's not enough tension in your writing.
I saw dismayed faces,
particularly when you gave us extensive exercises for our manuscripts. This
leads to the next subject: time,
which isn't on any novelist's side. Today's blatant message is that the
successful writer is a fast writer.
Self-publishing proponents say the more titles you put out there, the better,
and traditional publishers want faster deliveries from their authors. But is
there a tradeoff between speed and quality?
There are boot camps that teach writers how to get out of
their own way. And, if you do get out of your own way, you can write at amazing
speeds and it can be liberating. NaNoWriMo (National Novel-writing Month) can
prove you can get a lot of words out--not necessarily good words in the best
order--but that's good to know. Particularly when you're starting out; you need
to learn that your writing doesn't have to be slow, painful, or laborious. That
said, first drafts are rarely the best
draft.
Most writers find their own rhythm and speed. Commercial
writers are under pressure to produce at a book-a-year pace. But it's hard to produce
a high impact, multi-layered, thematically rich, beautifully-written novel
every year like clockwork, considering you've got other things to do like proof
your last book, attend signings, and have a life of some kind.
So I do believe there are tradeoffs between speed and
quality. I think, on balance, most writers don't take enough time with their fiction, particularly early on in their
careers. I would recommend that most writers, even those who are further along
and published, spend more time in
revision.
Another theme in your
workshops is don't submit your manuscript too early. Are there ways to avoid this
pitfall?
If you're a first-time novelist, you are going to submit your manuscript too early. That is a guarantee.
You'll learn the hard way, like everyone else, that your manuscript is not
ready yet. I think I've given up trying to talk people out of that...
At this point, Donald
looks pensive. He picks up the thread again:
What's seems more dangerous and damaging... If the period of
time grows too long, if the frustration grows too great, the option becomes
self-publishing. We used to call it "vanity publishing." Now it's
called self-publishing, but it's the same thing. It means seeing the work in
book form, which is validating in a way. "I made a book" is a nice
feeling to have. But did I make a good book? Did I make this book the best it
could be? Almost always, the answer is no.
But how do you know
when your manuscript is really ready?
Most writers have a gut instinct they're not listening to.
Professional authors who have been at it for a while learn to trust their gut.
Even when they can't articulate what's at issue with their manuscript, they know when something's wrong and they're
willing to tear out whole sections.
George R. R. Martin did that when writing one of his novels
for the A Song of Ice and Fire series.
He was five years between books, his fans were screaming, his editor was
tearing her hair out, he was 180 pages into his manuscript and realized he'd
made a wrong turn. And, even though this was a bestselling series and he was
under tremendous pressure to produce a manuscript, he threw it all out and
started over. That was a gutsy and hard thing to do.
He threw out the whole thing?
Yes, he started over. So it's said and I believe it. That's
a professional attitude. That's listening to your gut and knowing when you have
to do better.
Donald emphasizes his
next sentence:
If you aim to be
published, you're going to submit too soon. If you aim to be great, you're
going to start listening to your gut.
I couldn't have asked for a better conclusion. I think I
speak for all the Pikes Peak Writers in thanking Donald for his 2012 presentations--they
were both illuminating and instructive. We hope to see him at many more PPW
Conferences.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a manuscript to edit.
About the Writer: Laura E. Reeve is the author of the Major
Ariane Kedros Novels from Roc. In the interest of full disclosure: Laura's
agent, Jennifer Jackson, is Vice President of DMLA.
Even so, Laura was still intimidated by the prospect of her first interview,
ever, being with Donald Maass. Luckily for her, Donald's personable and easy to
interview. Laura's web site can be found at AncestralStars.com.
