Recommended Reading

I've been rereading Donald Mass's "How to Write a Breakout Novel." It and Stephen King's "On Writing" are my two most favorite books about writing ever.

Donald Mass's book is amazing in that it cuts to the chase, lets you know how to complicate the heck out of your story, or to simplify it, to make it break out.

Example:

Do you have a large cast of characters in your story that all seem important, but really the story doesn't hing on their well-being? Well, why not combine two characters together? Like, say the pizza delivery guy could also be the high school student that has a crush on your main female protagonist. Rolling two less important characters together can make a decent story with "ho-hum" secondary characters into something that's really interesting, by keeping the depth in all the characters. And it's less for you to have to remember.

I really love this book, and seriously, if you want to be better at what you do, you need to read this book. Granted, some of his predictions about where genres are going isn't exactly on par, since the book is a few years old, but his advice is timeless.

I highly recommend it.