Timothy's Thoughts

S ome days ago, Richard Mabry blogged about Donald Maass' book The Fire In Fiction: Passion, Purpose, And Technique To Make Your Novel Great . I went to Amazon.com and read a portion of the book, saw a few things that made me think I would be interested in reading it and clicked the buy button. It arrived a couple of days later and I put it next to the computer, thinking I would read it later. I currently have bookmarks in two novels, The Almost True Story of Ryan Fisher and Inkdeath . Donald Maass’ book kept calling to me. My left hand kept reaching over to pick it up and I kept scolding it, until it refused to obey. I found myself reading the book. As Richard said, Donald Maass has some good things to say in the introduction. I read that and moved on to Chapter One: Protagonists vs. Heroes . He also had some good things to say there. Even though I have written about how I hate block quotes , I forced myself to read the examples he lifted from various novels. I tried to understan...

aspire to seek to attain a goal wannabe somebody who tries to be like someone else or to belong to a specific group (informal disapproving) [source: Encarta Dictionary] Wannabe is often a derogatory term. “Is he any good?” someone will ask. “No, he’s just a wannabe ,” we might respond. Notice the definitions above. A wannabe has the goal of being like someone else while to aspire allows for any kind of goal. In the context that it is often used, a wannabe is someone putting on the appearance of being something, but is not. One of the marks of a wannabe -author is that he gets his feelings hurt when someone implies that his writing isn’t that great. Why? Because his only goal is to be an author and he is willing to take shortcuts to get there. He is something of a copycat. He mimics authors. When his manuscript has all the elements that he enjoys about the books written by a favored author, he su...