Writing 21st Century Fiction – Donald Maass
by Linda C Butler
This is a new book out by Donald Maass who is a book agent and was one of the speakers at the Surrey International Writers Conference which I attended a week ago. As always, he is a top speaker.
The book, Writing 21st Century Fiction, goes along with his workshop. He opens by telling us that the New York Times Best Seller list is no longer made up of commercial fiction, but most of the best sellers were originally classed as literary fiction. Literary fiction is selling the way commercial fiction is supposed to. This high impact fiction comes from a combination of great stories and beautiful writing. The publishing industry is now calling these books: literary/commercial fiction. In this 21st century, the books that make it to the best seller list are pushing the boundaries, and we as writers must learn to do that as well. “When novels are chained to the past, they cannot speak to the present.”
“The characters who resonate most widely today don’t merely reflect our times, they reflect ourselves….Revealing human truths means transcending tropes, peering into the past with fresh eyes, unearthing all that is hidden, and moving beyond what is easy and comfortable to write whiat is hard and even painful to face…Get out of the past. Get over trends…start by becoming highly personal….”
Interesting comments for writers.
Romance Novelist 