Member Price: Free (with donation options)
Non-Member Price: $10
**Digital doors open at 6:55 pm; event starts at 7:00 pm
**Portions of this event will be recorded and made available to registrants to view for 30 days. Breakout room discussions will not be recorded.
The Federation of BC Writers invites you to participate in our newest programming initiative: Book Club for Writers! This online book club for writers offers an opportunity to read and discuss books related to the craft of writing. Book Club events are 75 minutes long and feature a combination of small group discussion using breakout rooms, large group discussion in the main room, as well as an opportunity to hear the author, contributor, editor, or special guest’s insights and ask questions.
Our March 2025 pick is Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass. We are thrilled that award-winning writer and FBCW Ambassador Frances Peck will join us to share her insights and lead the conversation. Register here (bcwriters.ca/events-for-writers) to receive the event link, discussion questions, and reminders. Purchase the book, review the discussion questions, and when it's time for the event, click on the link to join the live Zoom event. We look forward to seeing you there!
BOOK BLURB:
Maybe you're a first-time novelist looking for practical guidance. Maybe you've already been published, but your latest effort is stuck in mid-list limbo. Whatever the case may be, author and literary agent Donald Maass can show you how to take your prose to the next level and write a breakout novel - one that rises out of obscurity and hits the best-seller lists.
Maass details the elements that all breakout novels share - regardless of genre - then shows you writing techniques that can make your own books stand out and succeed in a crowded marketplace.
You'll learn:
• establish a powerful and sweeping sense of time and place
• weave subplots into the main action for a complex, engrossing story
• create larger-than-life characters that step right off the page
• explore universal themes that will interest a broad audience of readers
• sustain a high degree of narrative tension from start to finish
• develop an inspired premise that sets your novel apart from the competition
Then, using examples from the recent works of several best-selling authors - including novelist Anne Perry - Maass illustrates methods for upping the ante in every aspect of your novel writing. You'll capture the eye of an agent, generate publisher interest and lay the foundation for a promising career.
PRESENTER BIO:
Frances Peck worked as an editor, ghostwriter, and instructor of editing and writing for three decades. Then she returned to her childhood preoccupation, creative writing. Her debut novel, The Broken Places, about a major earthquake rocking Vancouver, was a Globe and Mail best book of 2022 and a finalist for the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. Her second novel, Uncontrolled Flight, about the death of a BC firefighting pilot, made 2023 book-of-the-year lists at 49th Shelf and Consumed by Ink. Frances grew up in Cape Breton, lived in Ottawa, and in 2005 moved to North Vancouver. She is at work on a new novel.
STEPS:
1. Register here to receive the discussion questions and event link
2. Purchase your print or electronic version of the book
3. Read the book and consider the discussion questions (emailed two weeks before meeting)
4. Join the Book Club meeting using the Zoom link to discuss your responses and hear from the authors!
Please email Meaghan@bcwriters.ca if you have any questions, or would like to suggest a book.
