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Top 10 Donald Maass Quotes (2025 Update)

Donald Maass Quote: “The first task in building a compelling story world is to create hope.”

1. “The first task in building a compelling story world is to create hope.”

— Donald Maass

Donald Maass Quote: “To infuse a novel with a significance that speaks to many requires, paradoxically, that you ignore what the public wants and focus instead on what matters to you.”

2. “To infuse a novel with a significance that speaks to many requires, paradoxically, that you ignore what the public wants and focus instead on what matters to you.”

— Donald Maass

Donald Maass Quote: “In short, a premise is any single image, moment, feeling, or belief that has enough power and personal meaning for the author to set her story on fire, and propel it like a rocket for hundreds of pages.”

3. “In short, a premise is any single image, moment, feeling, or belief that has enough power and personal meaning for the author to set her story on fire, and propel it like a rocket for hundreds of pages.”

— Donald Maass

Donald Maass Quote: “High-impact 21st century fiction is built on unique voices, uncommon characters, and tales that can only be told by a particular author. They’re sui generis.”

4. “High-impact 21st century fiction is built on unique voices, uncommon characters, and tales that can only be told by a particular author. They’re sui generis.”

— Donald Maass

Donald Maass Quote: “Beautiful writing may sparkle like a diamond necklace, but sparkling isn’t a feeling.”

5. “Beautiful writing may sparkle like a diamond necklace, but sparkling isn’t a feeling.”

— Donald Maass

Donald Maass Quote: “Here’s a writing craft tool that you can remove from your toolbox and throw away: description. It’s the stuff that most readers skim. Even when deftly done using the five senses it’s a lead weight. It isn’t needed anymore.”

6. “Here’s a writing craft tool that you can remove from your toolbox and throw away: description. It’s the stuff that most readers skim. Even when deftly done using the five senses it’s a lead weight. It isn’t needed anymore.”

— Donald Maass

Donald Maass Quote: “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.”

7. “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

Donald Maass Quote: “Beautiful writing is more than pretty prose. It creates resonance in readers’ minds with parallels, reversals, and symbols. It conjures a story world that is unique, highly detailed, and brought alive by the characters that dwell there. It offers moments of breath-catching surprise, heart-gripping insight, revelation, and self-understanding. It engages the reader’s mind with an urgent point, which we might call theme.”

8. “Beautiful writing is more than pretty prose. It creates resonance in readers’ minds with parallels, reversals, and symbols. It conjures a story world that is unique, highly detailed, and brought alive by the characters that dwell there. It offers moments of breath-catching surprise, heart-gripping insight, revelation, and self-understanding. It engages the reader’s mind with an urgent point, which we might call theme.”

— Donald Maass

Donald Maass Quote: “His characters may be cardboard, but each has a clear, uncomplicated purpose. Every moment of the story contributes to building conflict.”

9. “His characters may be cardboard, but each has a clear, uncomplicated purpose. Every moment of the story contributes to building conflict.”

— Donald Maass

Donald Maass Quote: “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.”

10. “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

Donald Maass Quote: “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.”

11. “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

Motivational Quotes

Motivational Quotes

Inspirational Entrepreneurship Quotes

Inspirational Entrepreneurship Quotes

Positive Quotes

Positive Quotes

Albert Einstein Quotes

Albert Einstein Quotes

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Motivational Quotes

INSPIRATIONAL SUCCESS MOTIVATIONAL

Inspirational Entrepreneurship Quotes

Inspirational Entrepreneurship Quotes

ENTREPRENEURSHIP BUSINESS INSPIRATIONAL

Positive Quotes

Positive Quotes

Albert Einstein Quotes

Albert Einstein Quotes

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Steve Jobs Quotes

Steve Jobs Quotes

ENTREPRENEURSHIP BUSINESS APPLE

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Inspirational Quotes

COURAGE MOTIVATIONAL STRENGTH

INSPIRATIONAL SUCCESS MOTIVATIONAL

Swami Vivekananda Quotes

Swami Vivekananda Quotes

LIFE SPIRITUALITY

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