The Emotional Craft of Fiction Quotes

“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

“The first task in building a compelling story world is to create hope.”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“Longing is different than need. Needing to solve plot problems can kick protagonists into action, but that’s not the same thing as forging a human bond. What does that is inner yearning.”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“An ironic, snarky, or perky tone can be used to avoid true intimacy with readers. Literary writing isn’t necessarily intimate, either. A life “closely observed” doesn’t mean we’ll care about it.”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“What the novelist is doing, though, is not causing readers to feel as the novelist does, or as his characters do, but rather inducing for each reader a unique emotional journey through a story.”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“Dive from a high platform, walk a country lane, watch your computer freeze, cross a finish line, hear your morning alarm, look for a parking space, toast on your anniversary, embrace a friend after a funeral. As you live your life, what do you feel? Terror, serenity, frustration, relief, groaning reluctance, patient endurance, pride, satisfaction, or a grief made bearable because somehow life will go on. We experience life as feelings.”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“When a plot resolves, readers are satisfied, but what they remember of a novel is what they felt while reading it. Hooks may hook, twists may intrigue, tension may turn pages, and prose may dazzle, but all of those effects fade as quickly as fireworks in a night sky. Ask readers what they best remember about novels and most will say the characters, but is that accurate? It’s true that characters become real to us but that is because of what they cause us to feel. Characters aren’t actually real; only our own feelings are. Emotional”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“Why is it important to look at fiction writing through the lens of emotional experience? Because that’s the way readers read. They don’t so much read as respond. They do not automatically adopt your outlook and outrage. They formulate their own. You are not the author of what readers feel, just the provocateur of those feelings. You may curate your characters’ experiences and put them on display, but the exhibit’s meaning is different in thousands of ways for thousands of different museum visitors, your readers. Not”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“Symbols are not only objects; they can be gestures, places, and words. Story can be symbolic all on its own, as in allegory. Considering the power of this oldest of literary devices,”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“To see how differently folks experience a work of fiction, check their comments on Goodreads. Are those people all reading the same novel?”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“The most useful question is not how can I get across what characters are going through? The better question is how can I get readers to go on emotional journeys of their own?”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“The effectiveness of symbols begins with their setup. If there is no context, as with diamond rings, symbols can have no effect. For readers to discover the symbolic meaning of an object they must be exposed to it in a pattern. Symbols sneak up. They’re perhaps not noticed at first, and aren’t meant to be, but after some recurrence, the note they strike is recognized. That isn’t always the way, of course. Big symbolic actions are the most potent when they come out of the blue.”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“We are surrounded by symbols and take them for granted. They had to start somewhere, though, and gained their meaning because of historical use, which is suggestive for fiction writers. Anything can be turned into a symbol.”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“Plot happens outside but story happens inside. Readers won't get the true story, though, unless you put it on the page--both the big meaning in small events, and the overlooked implications of large plot turns.”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“Thus, creating big feelings in readers requires laying a foundation on top of which readers build their own towering experience. What is that foundation? The more precise question is, what triggers readers to dredge up their own emotional experiences? One answer is this: It’s the small details (reminders) used to evoke a situation that are preloaded with feeling.”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“What provokes readers to experience their own profound sense of self? How do readers feel their oats, pick up their own baggage, smile at their own ironies, snap out of their worries, and feel that things today actually are okay? In life, things like that can happen when we bounce off of others or pick up the moods of others. We lock horns, back away from bias, scream at rock concerts, cheer at football games, nod in agreement, join the mob and pick up stones to throw, or raise our palms to heaven and murmur an amen. The effect is similar in fiction. In reading fiction we react to what others are feeling strongly, in this case the characters. Strong feelings are an invitation. Or a challenge. Strong feelings press us to judge what characters feel. We sympathize with them, or not. We engage on our own level.”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“Creating a world that is emotionally involving for readers means raising questions and concerns about that world. It means both welcoming readers inside that world and making them curious, or uneasy, about where they are. First-person narration, the self-absorbed voice of our age, would seem to do that automatically but that belief is deceptive. True emotional engagement happens when a reader isn’t just enjoying a character’s patter but when she cannot avoid self-reflection, whether she’s aware of it happening or not.”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“Despite that, great storytellers are able to make emotions as compelling as anything else on the page. They make the emotional life of characters the focus rather than a sideshow. They make familiar emotions fresh and small feelings large. They immerse us in the emotional worlds of characters without indulging in darkness or sickening us in the sun. They stir the high human emotions that make stories memorable.”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“We experience life as feelings. It’s funny, then, that so much fiction is written to minimize feelings or leave them out altogether. It’s as if emotions are not a fit subject or writing about them is too simplistic. Even fiction that celebrates feelings, romance for instance, can sometimes work with only a limited and familiar emotional palette. We can wallow in emotional content yet feel curiously empty.”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“It might seem that you shouldn’t worry about what readers feel they’re either going to feel what you want them to feel or not. But that way of thinking surrenders too much to chance. It leads to the erroneous idea that emotional effect is accidental. While it’s true that you cannot control what each reader will feel while reading your work, what you can control is whether they will feel something in the first place and how strong those feelings will be.”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“We’re clear. We’re vague. We hate. We love. We feel passionately about our shoes yet shrug off disasters on TV. We are finely tuned sensors of right and wrong, and horrible examples for our kids. We are walking contradictions. We are encyclopedias of the heart.”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“What gets readers going are feelings that are fresh and unexpected. Yet those feelings also need to be real and true; otherwise, they will come across as contrived—they’ll ring false and fail to ignite the reader’s emotions. Skillful authors play against expected feelings. They go down several emotional layers in order to bring up emotions that will catch readers by surprise. There’s always a different emotion to use. A story situation is an emotional elephant. There are many ways of looking at and feeling about what’s happening at any given moment. Stop your story at any point, ask the point-of-view character what she is feeling, and it’s never just one answer. Ask two characters what they feel about what’s happening and neither will ever say the same thing. Human beings are complex. We have emotions on the surface and emotions underneath. There are emotions that we minimize, hide, and deny. There are emotions that embarrass us, reveal too much, and make us vulnerable. Our emotions can be profoundly trivial or so elevated that they’re silly. What we feel is inescapably influenced by our history, morals, loyalties, and politics.”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“When readers feel strongly, their hearts are open. Your stories can not only reach them for a moment, but they can change them forever. I don’t care about what you write, how you write it, your choices in publishing, or what you want out of your career. What I want is to feel deeply as I read your work. I want to feel connected to you and your characters in the way I do to the most memorable classics and the most stunning new titles I’ll read this year.”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“Ask readers what they best remember about novels and most will say the characters, but is that accurate? It’s true that characters become real to us but that is because of what they cause us to feel. Characters aren’t actually real; only our own feelings are. Emotional impact is not an extra. It’s as fundamental to a novel’s purpose and structure as its plot. The emotional craft of fiction underlies the creation of character arcs, plot turns, beginnings, midpoints, endings, and strong scenes. It is the basis of voice.”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“What do we mean when we say “meaning”? For our purposes it’s not one thing, a single gem of wisdom. It’s the stream of insight, understanding, realization, and acceptance that one continually gains from personal experience, and that adds up to the subjective reality called me. The me in meaning is aimed primarily at seeing the significance of our experiences not for others, but for ourselves. We are philosophers of I. Take”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“That said, nothing builds reader involvement more surely than a character whose moral struggle pervades the tale. When readers hope, beg, and plead with you to let a character turn toward the light, you have readers where you want them. A character who is good is good; a character”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“Who your characters are, how they behave, what they believe, how they think, what they do, and the ways in which they feel are in your control. Why create characters who only raise shrugs? In”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“What provokes readers to experience their own profound sense of self?”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“What all that means is that readers fundamentally want to feel something, not about your story, but about themselves. They want to play. They want to anticipate, guess, think, and judge. They want to finish a story and feel competent. They want to feel like they’ve been through something. They want to connect with your characters and live their fictional experience, or believe that they have. Creating”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“Positive means feeling enjoyment, suspense, amusement, and the satisfaction of what psychologists call belief affirmation—stories turning out as readers believe they should. That requires more than just a happy ending. It means affirming readers’ beliefs and validating their morals.”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface