The Maass Moment

If you’ve fought your way through Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook or heard Donald Maass speak, you know what I’m talking about. The Maass Moment is when the protagonist goes beyond burning bridges; he sets himself adrift in a burning boat. All is lost.

As Thomas Wolfe wrote in You Can’t Go Home Again, “Son, son, you have been mad and drunken, furious and wild, filled with hatred and despair, and all the dark confusions of the soul – but so have we.” 

There is no going back. The character and his world have changed.

Writing a Maass Moment is hard. The writer should not (in my opinion):

Spring the Maass Moment on an unsuspecting readership. In the workshop I attended in January, Donald Maass led us through a series of steps where the protagonist continues to undercut her goal until she comes to the point of no return. (Click here for Charlie Barshaw’s awesome review of that workshop.)

Allow the protagonist achieve the Maass Moment by being drunk and disorderly. Sure, people do that in real life, but the novel is much more effective if the crisis occurs through emotional strain rather than debauchery.

Let the character off too easily. By nature, I’m a peacemaker, so my characters tend to resolve conflicts. I go through the steps outlined in the workshop and rewrite each appropriate scene. But I note the page. The following day, I revisit that scene, and make it worse, forbid the characters to kiss and make up, make them to say hateful things, and force them to do the unforgivable. Then I revise again. And again. I never make it bad enough on the first few tries.  

Once the character has lost everything, she is free to do what was impossible before. 

Silhouette

Zach working, and the sun coming through the trees. 

This Week's Insights

If you have to write a query letter pitch, assign yourself a hated household task. Tell yourself you cannot work on that letter until the task is done. Inspiration magically arrives.

Stepping away from a manuscript away can be a huge relief.

Coming back to a manuscript always brings insight. Sometimes it offers pleasant surprises.

Spring is an optimistic time of year.

Don't hesitate when spring bulbs bloom. Grab that camera before the deer find them. (There will be no chionodoxa or "glory of the snow" pictures this year.) 

Before the Snack

These crocuses won't last long, but I snapped a few pics before somebody ate them. 

You know I can't resist a backlit petal. 

Signs of Spring

Spring comes slowly to Michigan. 

An animal bit off the crocuses but didn't eat them.

Overheard #310

"It's a perfectly good interface between structure and chaos."

More Amaryllis

We had a bumper crop of amaryllis. 

The Stardust produced a second stalk and five more flowers. Here they are backlit for a stained glass effect. Note the stamens and carpels in the center of the blossom.

Now Dancing Queen has started to bloom. This flower is a double which means there are more petals. Double flowers are homeotic mutants in which stamens and/or carpels are replaced by petals.

Here's The Little Shop of Horrors View

fire in the sky

Overheard #309

“The hold-music seems unnecessarily mournful.”

The Five Stages of Revision

1.  Wallowing. The writer has just re-read a first draft or received an in-depth critique. An overwhelming amount of work is required to turn this pile of words into coherence, let alone greatness. The mistake I often make during this stage is forgetting that the operative word in self-pity is self. No one cares how bad I think my manuscript is.

2.  Mud Wrestling. Ideas are slippery and hard to pin down. It’s easy to regress into wallowing. This is a time to experiment with new concepts and techniques. Anything that doesn’t work can go back into the murk. With determination, the writer can progress to …

3.  Running the Marathon. Points to remember:

• You can’t see the finish from the starting line.
• This is the land of The Tortoise and the Hare. It’s okay to change roles occasionally. It’s okay to take naps. Eventually the race must be finished.
• There will be dead-ends and detours.
• You may need to plot a new course.

4.  Rinse and Repeat. The marathon may need to be run again. And again. No one said this was easy.

5.  Spit and Polish. The novel has now has structure, real characters, six-pack abs and a killer ending. Where did all those needless words come from? Doesn’t that sentence need a coma? Find a place to read out loud.

Expressing Character Emotions - Over at The Mitten

An overview (with additional examples) is over on The Mitten Blog today. 

Here are the links back to my original posts.

Introduction

Describe what the character experiences

Characters’ thoughts

Body language and gestures

Unique characters 

Overheard #308

"They make you read something that's acutely obtuse."

On Practicing

Everyone has heard the old joke.

Q: How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

A: Practice.

While practicing improves the performance of any skill, many of us resent, postpone or even shun practicing.

The ACT college entrance exam is given early in March, so I’m in tutoring crunch time. I tell my students that practicing on sample tests will increase their speed in answering questions. As few things are as mind-numbing as ACT practice tests, it’s safe to say that none of my students has ever done her homework.

Recently, I asked my son, Jeremy, how to get students to practice.

“Scare them,” he said.

“Um, what?” I asked.

“My guitar teacher writes a metronome setting, and I’m so scared, I practice until I can play that fast.”

That approach works for Jeremy because he owns the problem. He understands that becoming a great guitar player includes the ability to play fast with clean articulation. My students don’t see how recognizing an Oxford comma or a 3-4-5 right triangle will help them excel in college. Imagine that!

My mother used to say, “Practice makes perfect.” But how do writers practice?

Trunk novels: Few writers publish the first novel they tried to write. All those manuscripts languishing on my hard drive have honed my writing skills.

Writing exercises: I do fewer of these than I used to. Perhaps it’s time to revisit the literary version of scales and arpeggios.

Free writing: See above.

Revision: Re-writing and re-envisioning are essential. It’s safe to say I practice revising every day.

Overheard #307

“We are more alike than we are not.”

Happy Valentine's Day!

The begonias are blooming - inside, of course.

Catch the light.

These plants came from a cutting my father-in-law gave me about twenty five years ago.

Overheard #306

"Read, my child, read."

Wind-chill -18 Degrees Fahrenheit

It's cold outside, but my daffodils caught the morning light. 

Overheard #305

“Snowplow sludge is residue from those rare days when Hell momentarily freezes over.”

Fractal Geometry

Okay, so this isn't exactly fractal geometry, but I couldn't resist the title. 

Overheard #304

"Thanks to your organization and professionalism, this was easy-peasy."

Amaryllis Time

I took these pictures in the morning on an overcast day when the flowers were slightly backlit. 

These were taken at noon after the sun came out. 

This variety of amaryllis is called Stardust. Here's Hoagy.

One of my favorite online plant companies has a sale on amaryllis after Christmas. I decided to order a second plant. After much deliberation, I chose Aphrodite. When the bulb arrived, there was a note on the receipt telling me Aphrodite sold out and they'd replaced my choice with ...

Dancing Queen.

Fair warning. You know what's coming.