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Make Your Characters Shine
Through talent or circumstance, make them exceptional.
On my last bargain book extravaganza, I found a bunch of writing craft books and, just recently, I’ve started reading the first one: Donald Maass’s Writing the Breakout Novel. Once you get past some of the quirky advice from the early ’00s — like not knowing whether e-readers would become a thing or sending agents a SASE along with your query — he gets down to some good storytelling advice.
And boy, has that advice got me shook.
The entire premise of the book is writing a breakout novel — that is, a novel that doesn’t settle into the midlist, but has the potential to shoot its way into bestseller status. Personally, I think it’s pretty ballsy for anybody to claim to have advice for that, but, what the hell. This guy’s been agenting since paper was invented — and is still agenting, I believe. I know that I queried his agency back when I was making the rounds with Somehow You’re Sitting Here back in 2016.
So I trust this guy’s advice, even if he didn’t predict Kindle becoming a thing.
The tricky thing that I’ve found is trying to convert his ideas for a breakout novel into workable tips for the genre that I write, which is quiet, contemporary YA. There’s one piece of advice, in particular, that’s sticking in…
