How to Write a Bestseller, from Donald Maass

     I've been writing my fifth novel, and editing, and also try to read a tremendous amount. Reading has to be one of my favorite and most absorbing activities. Books have to earn my attention, though, and I'm very selective.

     There are many more books out than I'll ever be able to read, and fascinating articles to read on the internet, and one of the books I've been enjoying lately has been Donald Maass' excellent instructional "Writing the Breakout Novel" chock-full of hot tips and weighty pronouncements that seem to slip off his tongue naturally, as if he were an authoritative professor. His observations are based in a wide range of life-long reading and attention to what is selling at this time. Being head of a successful literary agency in New York City, and a primary mover of best-sellers, he writes with authority and wit on how to write for success.

     By "breakout" he is referring to books that break out from the "mid-list" and become "bestsellers." I'm not certain what's below the mid-list--the low-list? In any case, if you'd like to know the secret ingredients in a wide range of commercial best-sellers, this is the best cookbook I've seen detailing how to write a best-seller.

     Bestsellers have:

1) a premise that fires the writer from beginning to end of the novel 

2) a layered complex plot with subplots, 

3) detailed sense of the times, setting or place, 

4) larger-than-life characters

5) deep themes.

     He does a conscientious job of observing the common features of bestsellers, and almost makes it sound easy to engineer, not that he has a strict formula. He readily admits the target of capturing "wizards," as he calls readers, is moving constantly.
     Writing is the responsibility of authors, he writes, for what goes on inside the sheets (of paper). This is a good one to buy and read. He asked that you buy it through his website, but doesn't make it easy to do, and here's a link again.

Keep Writing