Today I want to invite you to a new online discussion: #FicCraft!

There's a book by literary agent Donald Maass called The Emotional Craft of Fiction. I loved his Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (only available in paperback, unfortunately) and I was excited to read Emotional Craft when it came out.

Emotional Craft describes specific, deliberate techniques writers can use to evoke emotion in readers. That alone was a big lesson for me--the goal isn't merely to depict a character's emotion, it's to make the reader feel something.

But I've really struggled to read Emotional Craft. The words are English but they don't make sense. (Theory: I approach fiction from a macro level and drill inwards, and this book is mostly focused on micro stuff.) So when my friend Robin Lovett said she was reading it I leaped at the chance to talk it through with someone. Her friend C.L. Polk offered to run a Twitter chat/discussion of the book, so that's what we're doing!

When: Sundays in December and January, new questions at 2pm EST

Where: Twitter via #FicCraft and questions provided by @clpolk

The first chat was yesterday and it was great, dozens of people introducing themselves and talking through how they approach writing emotion in fiction. (Common answer: We aren't doing it strategically, we just sort of... do? So a lot of us are hoping to learn to use these tools with intent.) That first chat was on Chapter 1 of Emotional Craft, but it's more of an introductory chapter and very short. On December 8th we'll talk about Chapter 2. You totally have time to catch up!

If you've never taken part in a Twitter chat before, you'll want a Twitter account (Writing Twitter is amazing!), and to log in with the same account to TweetDeck. Set up one column for Notifications, and another with a Search for #ficcraft. That way you don't have to keep refreshing the feed and losing your place, and you also won't have to worry about missing messages.

TL;DR: Come read Don Maass' The Emotional Craft of Fiction with a bunch of other writers and talk about it on Twitter at #ficcraft!

I'm so excited for this chat series. I hope you'll join us next weekend and through January!