Be impressed with your Writer Unboxed Breakout Novel Dissection Group. In our last round of discussions, we dissected not one, but three novels. All at once. We were trying something new, just this once, and there’s a good reason why.

If you have been following posts from the dissection group, you know that four times a year we ask members to nominate a recent novel they’d want to discuss in order to understand the mechanics that led to its breakout success. From half a dozen nominees, members vote to select the one novel we’ll dissect.

Members of the dissection group are writers (and readers) of all genres. Thus, we’ve ended up dissecting novels from nearly every genre: sci fi, dystopian, literary, women’s, historical, young adult, humor, thriller…

The range has been satisfying. Don Maass’s writings on breakout fiction – on which our group bases its dissections – recognize that the craft underlying breakouts applies across genre. In Writing 21st Century Fiction, he underscores that high-impact fiction merges both character- and plot-driven craft, propelling breakout success. And a frequent observation after dissections is how much participants gain from discussing novels in genres outside their typical reading or writing tastes.

Still… going into last year, the moderators and members of the group expressed a greater push for diversity. The democracy of picking one book often left stellar second and third choices. And – as much as we’d seen some range in author and main character diversity – we noticed that those near-misses would have included greater diversity in gender, race and culture.

So in July, we tried an experiment. Rather than reading only one top vote, we culled a poll from all of those near-misses, and then dissected the top three, which yielded this amazing list:

• Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad
• Nicole Yoon’s The Sun Is Also A Star
• Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere

Warning: If you haven’t read the novel(s), know that SPOILERS MAY BE PRESENT in shared excerpts here or on the Facebook discussion.

Three books, one discussion.

Before you panic on behalf of our participants: members only had to read one of the books to participate (although our group is full of avid readers, so many had read two or all three of the books). We provided guidelines and summaries to keep things clear.

There are lots of reasons why this was a successful experiment. It allowed us to get to three books that had repeatedly been suggested by participants, where we might only have gotten to one or have missed these titles altogether. Sometimes we’ve lost participation when people were disappointed a great book wasn’t chosen — and we were legitimately stoked to be more inclusive with more choices.

And, from a craft perspective, it allowed us to compare side by side the ways each writer attempted (or ignored) aspects of breakout fiction. As we all know from workshop discussions, those kind of comparisons can lead to fresh insights.

Threads of Breakout Characteristics

Our group uses a set of questions – approximately six per day for a week – derived from Don Maass’s advice in Writing the Breakout Novel. From the dozens of insights participants shared, here are a few highlights that stood out: [Read more…]