About this Book

The essential guide to evoking emotional experiences in your readers

Writers might disagree over showing versus telling or plotting versus pantsing, but none would argue this: If you want to write strong fiction, you must make your readers feel.

Veteran literary agent and expert fiction instructor Donald Maass shows you how to use story to provoke a visceral and emotional experience in readers. You'll learn:

• emotional modes of writing
• beyond showing versus telling
• your story's emotional world
• moral stakes
• connecting the inner and outer journeys
• plot as emotional opportunities
• invoking higher emotions, symbols, and emotional language
• cascading change
• story as emotional mirror
• positive spirit and magnanimous writing
• the hidden current that makes stories move

Readers can simply read a novel...or they can experience it. The Emotional Craft of Fiction shows you how to make that happen.