Mike Klaassen

Reviewed by Carla Trueheart for Readers' Favorite

Whether you’re a beginning writer or a master, there is something for you inside Mike Klaassen’s Fiction-Writing Modes: Eleven Essential Tools for Bringing Your Story to Life. The book is expertly formatted and includes just about everything a novice or professional writer might need, broken down into eleven modes. Each chapter opens with a list of forthcoming topics, such as Advancing Plot Through Dialogue: facial expressions, gestures, and movement. Other topics addressed include Sensation and Emotion (strong verb use, adverbs and adjectives, character reactions, setting, emotional journey and more), how to use introspection and recollection, how to advance the plot through action, and how to use attributions in dialogue. While the beginning writer will note unfamiliar terms such as exposition, stimulus-response order, scene and sequel, adverbs of attribution, and obtrusive narration, the seasoned writer will hone their skills through reminders of strong verb usage, connotation and denotation, and use of transitions. Because so much is covered in Fiction-Writing Modes: Eleven Essential Tools for Bringing Your Story to Life, the book will be a splendid addition to any writer’s library.


In addition to providing the eleven writing modes, author Mike Klaassen uses writing examples to illustrate each topic covered in the book. No writing tool is mentioned without a follow-up example so writers get a sense of the ultimate goal. Also, the book covers punctuation, which is something many writing books do not include. Punctuation and grammar are important parts of the writing process, especially during editing and revision. The book concludes with a Glossary of Fiction-Writing Terms, which sums up the terms used in the book. I highly recommend Fiction-Writing Modes: Eleven Essential Tools for Bringing Your Story to Life to anyone interested in becoming a writer or polishing their writing skills.… (plus d'informations)

Reviewed by Carla Trueheart for Readers' Favorite

This is the second book I have read by author Mike Klaassen, and I like each one more and more. Scenes and Sequels teaches the writer how to focus on their writing using a closer structure—the method of scenes and sequels. The book explains the process and how to incorporate it into your own fiction writing for a stronger, more action-packed story overall. Scenes are goals, while sequels are responses, and all of these formulas are written out in the book for ease of conceptualization for the writer. Also included are passages that explain troubleshooting, how to read a piece of your writing and find the problem if you’re struggling with a scene, and when to put away the writing when you just can’t come up with a proper sequel. The book also explains how to apply the scene and sequel technique and how to examine if what you’re writing is a scene or a sequel, which is helpful. Basically, this is a different way to write that will give your writing project the extra action and emotion that it needs and requires for the best possible publication outcome.

In Scenes and Sequels, I enjoyed the Goldilocks example and found that the story breakdown was exactly what was needed to explore the concept of scene and sequel. There are also worksheets to help with your analysis of a specific passage of writing, and I found myself taking notes outside of the book so I could reference them later while writing. In addition, Mike Klaassen provides fiction writing terms at the end of the book that should prove helpful to the new writer or even someone who has been in the field and needs a refresher. I would recommend this book to all writers, new and not-so-new.… (plus d'informations)

I had to give this one 5 stars. If you are a fan of war novels which use real historical people and real places, this one is for you. It is graphic and visceral, but Mr. Klaassen's mix of actual historical characters and real battles are made much more realistic with the fictional characters that he has created. The novel follows four different people and outlines their experiences during the War of 1812 when the Americanswent to war in order to annex parts of what was known as Lower Canada and most of all to gain complete control of the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Great Lakes. Since Canada was a British colony, this brought the British into the war in order to defend their colony. We saw the British perspective through the eyes of George Sherbourne, who is a young Canadian lieutenant who is asked by the British to spy on the Americans. Lemuel Wyckliffe is a young Kentucky backwoodsman who lost his mother and his sister during an Indian raid. He joins the American army to seek revenge, and becomes a very competent assassin and sniper. Silas Shakleton is a young man on the run from New York gangs, and reluctantly joins the Ameriacan army in order to escape the heat he had created back home. He becomes a scout for a high-ranking American general. Hadjo is a Muskogee warrior who was recruited by Tecumseh to fight with the English . We go back and forth among the four viewpoints, and we meet historical people like David Crockett, Techumseh, Daniel Boone, President James Madison and his wife Dolly, and many others. What a wonderful history lesson. It captivated me from beginning to end. Mr. Klaassen's prose is very well-done indeed. Hightly recommended.… (plus d'informations)