The Emotional Craft of Fiction

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.