Donald Maass

“Beautiful writing may sparkle like a diamond necklace, but sparkling isn’t a feeling.”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“For me, where genre ends and literature begins doesn’t matter. What matters is whether a given novel hits me with high impact. If it does, it probably is fulfilling the purpose of fiction. It has drawn me into a story world, held me captive, taken me on a journey with characters like none I’ve ever met, revealed truths I’ve somehow always known and insights that rock my brain. It’s filled me with awe, which is to say it’s made me see the familiar in a wholly new way and made the unfamiliar a foundational part of me. It both entertains and matters. It both captures our age and becomes timelessly great. It does all that with the sturdy tools of story and the flair of narrative art.”
― Donald Maass, Writing 21st Century Fiction: High Impact Techniques for Exceptional Storytelling