Answering Questions about Writing

hello just made my vlogbrothers video about writing and books and stuff come on over here to talk about things that tweets this from Dakota once you decide on binge reading versus a daily ritual so I talked about this in the other video but I do feel like there are times for binge writing and there are times for daily ritual I you know like when I'm working on a climax I tend to be much more like long stretches you know broken up by breaks but you know verses when I'm working up like working up to and doing background and like that stuff is less exciting and so and also like it me I need more time to like what I'm running in climax I know what I'm doing right I like I've I've worked it all out and I just I need to get it out on the paper and like I need to keep it all in my head so that I don't make any like mistakes in terms of like you know what do they call it in movies when the cup moves from seeing the scene fat you know what I mean throughout the process of a single project there are like I'm listening to the book in terms of what it needs like do I need to spend more time off the page doing research reading other books getting inspired you know thinking about my characters or do I know what I'm doing again like if I know what I'm doing I'm sort of much more suited to Bend writing and if I don't that it's much more suited to like writing an hour a day and then like seeing that tomorrow if I liked what I wrote and if it was going in the right direction so I definitely like I I don't like I don't pick and choose one of the other what in your past has made you a stronger writer I think the big thing is route like reading definitely but also writing like ultimately I write a lot of like my fiction is very nonfiction eat because I write a lot of nonfiction and so that's kind of a cheesy answer like writing has made me a better writer but that's the biggest thing and and also I think that there's there's like reading and just enjoying it and then there's reading and like thinking about why the choices were made reading something that's commercially successful in thinking like why was this commercially successful what was it about this that made got people going and like is it is it as simple as just a good plot that ties itself together well or is it something bigger than that is a topic is it genre what line of dialogue you most proud of coming up with I've got one in the and the sequel that I really like a lot but it was Katherine's joke that she made in real life that I put in the book so currently take credit for that one I like let's see there's a there's a time this was the time when April says my new favorite kind of fire I like that line a lot it won't make any sense if you haven't read the book if I guess I'm not that proud of it if I don't remember it offhand there there's a lot of non dialogue dialogue e stuff because April talks like she's speaking to the reader so it's kind of everything is dialogue in one way now that you have experience in both do you prefer nonfiction or fiction will you be writing a nonfiction book in the future I am interested in writing a nonfiction book I have too many ideas for non-fiction books it's harder for me to sort of nail one thing down nonfiction to me is like very hard and it's sort of like write all like here's everything I guess could and I've this I've seen that both and my friends who have tried to write nonfiction and in in books that I've read by people who I don't know where I'm just like you'd yeah get a focus I need you to focus and that's really hard so like especially because the stuff I want to talk about in a nonfiction book would be pretty I think you know part of me wants to do a science like nonfiction science work whether that's like sort of a history of science thing which I've always been interested in or if it's like exploration of biology through you know the lens of reproduction which I'm very interested in or the but like also I don't think I think about most writing is like kind of like vlogbrothers II manual for being a human type of stuff or like how do we handle the forty years of you know before I'm dead like what does that look like and how do we do it best kind of book and that's very hard to put into like you know a pitch that you send and said this is what the books about and it's also that would make it very hard to actually write without sort of writing forever and being like here's the four hundred thousand words of nonlinear garbage but so I might a nonfiction might be my next book project if I have another one like honestly I've got busy and I don't know but like I have found that it incorporates into my lifestyle fairly well so we'll see we'll see how I feel about it when I'm done with this thing which is hard to see past but I yeah really like both but I will say that like my fiction is very much written as nonfiction and that's another thing that I didn't really know and then I'm glad that I know now that like the things that I like in books that doesn't mean that that's the thing that I'm gonna write like I'm not like I'm not gonna write like Hyperion you know like Dan Simmons it's just not gonna happen I'm not that good like I'm not that good I'm not a masterful artist I'm gonna write a different kind of thing and that doesn't mean that like it's not valuable but I need to like lean into my expertise and lean into like what I'm good at I'm not really a poet you know but I am good at explaining things and and telling stories so you can tell stories in different ways and just because like I really love you know Hyperion doesn't mean that like me not writing that is some like betrayal of what I love it's just like I'm doing the thing that is me and and that took me a little while to figure out that like it was okay to write different than like my favorite books like I'm not just trying to do my favorite book and that's really freeing and also like it's freeing both in terms of like I can do what I want but also in terms of like the amount of pressure that I'm putting on myself to say like this isn't about like writing as good as my favorite writers it's about me writing me way doing that the best I can rather than like trying to live up to some expectation or standard that I'm never going to live up to what's your favorite word two types as a garage garage is my favorite word to type give it a try you don't even need this hand and it goes back and forth between like the index finger Raj Raj how specific do I need to be with the city my story is set in obviously this is like up to everybody one thing that I have learned and that I really admire other writers for and and what what to him in trying to get better at is like making the setting a character and like having the place be alive what did I read recently was this yes Robinson sourdough where the places were characters you know like they had so much life in them and I felt like that was a lesson that I was really happy to like be learning from like to like see a little bit of how a master was doing it and I'm not great at that but but I think that that like it doesn't have to be that way and like either city doesn't have to be a real city I have both real and fake places in my books that you know like so like New York City obviously is a real City the city that April grew up in is in a real city not that that's explored much in the books but like something I know about and so it's like how like real cities are great because you can actually go to them spend time in them you can if you can't go to them you can walk around them in Google Maps and like at least see how far apart stuff is and you know you can use and be like tell me how you would take the subway from Brooklyn to you know the financial district and it will tell you but like and then in terms of creating a fake city then that is going to be like creating a character it's gonna like you you have to take elements of other things that you have experienced and sort of splice them together along with your own creation so how specific do you need to be like you don't need to be specific at all but it comes down to whether you want the the place to be its own like have a character and like have a have like be something be a part of the story more and that's like up to each individual story at what point when writing an absolutely remarkable thing did you realize you were going to write a sequel when I finished the book literally hit the climax and was like oh no this is definitely ending like I'm writing an ending right now so that's a weird thing to like finishing a book is not like like finishing a first draft is a wild experience not that I have had it very many times just once but but like being like it I've done I done dit it's like it wasn't done of course like the final book was ten fifteen percent longer than what I sent him out to my agent the first time I sent it out to an agent but you know it was it was done it was a it was a full story and like no like ultimately you you know when that's happened when like well I'm not we'll talk a little bit more about this but like I'm not an outliner and so like the three act structure is going to come from sort of the like gut level stuff for me and so when I hit the third act I was like oh there can't be we're not gonna get to this other stuff that is part of the story for me unless we like start up a whole new three act structure which you can do in one book but I'm not going to because it is a lot more words turns out the second book is almost definitely significantly more words than the first book not like double or anything but more how do I plot and make it cohesive I talked about this in the other video but how do you plot and make a cohesive it's it's about holding a lot of information in your head and also using tools to augment that because obviously I still can't remember the term for when you know you had a cane and one scene a note umbrella and the other one it's still not in there so I can't hold everything in my head especially not that which is a continuity oh good I'm not completely losing it so you I got a hold a lot of stuff in you had but you also have the have to use the tools at your disposal to help you hold stuff in your head I use Scrivener to write and like lots of people use lots of different things John just writes in word I think but I you Scrivener and that gives me a place to put character outlines which are really helpful for minor characters for me for major characters I don't need to do care I've never done a character outline for a major character because like it's they'd sort of like live inside my head but for minor characters it's like what did this person do for a living what does their hair look like how tall are they how do they dress you know like it gives me that information so that and and minor characters it's really important to do that stuff this is something I learned who did I learn this from it was a it was a they're like books that have lots of characters and they do a really great job of helping me I think Harry Potter does a good job of this but I don't know if that's who I was thinking of oh Michael Connelly does does this really well you you you have to not only in your own mind if you're having a hard time keeping your character straight your minor character straight in your own mind you need to give something for other people to to latch on to so like somewhat of a bizarre name helps sort of like any linguistic or verbal tic or like you mentioned there shaggy hair every time they come on screen or you mentioned that they're always wearing a band t-shirt or something like oh this is the band t-shirt guy oh this is the this is the guy with the funny name he's called trunk e trunk by his friends and you know like Bosch novel like Michael Connolly novels are full of like every like this is this person's name but everybody calls them this because there's such a hard-ass or whatever and and that helps you latch on to these characters especially early on before they get developed but in general I was not your question but but I think that in terms of plot also characters hat like using things that can supplement your knowledge of your story and like store information so that you can go back and look is really valuable also writing short stories helps with this and like can flex that muscle and I've never published a short story of ambushed one short story but a shorter story lets you have a more cohesive plot and you don't have to hold as much stuff in your head at the same time but we'll talk a little bit more about some things soon about this do your characters ever refuse what to do what you want them to do they don't refuse to do what I want them to do because ultimately I want them to do with the thing that they want to do but they do refuse to get themselves into the places where I need them to be and then you you just have to write around it like it's I like I think that it's really important for there to be pillars of your story that like this is you can't like it's the load supporting wall like you can't knock that down or the pole building comes down there are things you just don't touch and uh and so you like make them and you're like I'm not gonna touch that I'm not gonna change that I'm gonna work around that problem and that was gonna look because we had to work around that problem it's gonna feel much more real to the audience to the reader audiences I'm the youtuber folks to the viewers of your book and and to me characters are that if you are changing them then the like it's a big it's a big deal you can do it but but you have but like it it matters a lot and to me like characters are like the supporting columns of the story structure and so if you're gonna move that over a little bit like there's a lot of change that has to happen to accommodate it I do that in an absolutely remarkable thing April April what happened was April sort of like came more into herself as I wrote and then when I went back and read the beginning again I was like oh not quite not consistent and so had to rework her like first couple chapters to make it feel real and I you know I as I reread the book that consistency that's another thing like revision is so important in all of this like when you've done with a book and then you reread the whole book you're like you change one or two words here that just like makes that person much more consistent throughout the book because you have like by the end of the book you have a much fuller idea of who the person is are you a plotter or a pantser says Mandy several people this question this is a new term that I heard is sometime in this year very much in relation to Game of Thrones plotters are people who sort of like set their whole plot out and they outline and they know where that story is going when they start Panthers are like let's put a bunch of people into a place and then we're gonna go by the seat of our pants and see what happens and like nobody is purely either of these things I'm convinced I in the very maybe there are pure plotters out there who do not let inspiration sway them during the process of writing I don't maybe especially people who are like very need to be productive people like who write just a lot a lot a lot but but I'm convinced that Panthers also plot like I've also heard of like a gardening metaphor where it's more like like do you sort of like throw seeds down but like once you throw the seeds down you still have to like move stuff around and like take out like you have to have to weed and you have to thin and like so all that stuff is still happening but I map answer for sure when I built like what would I start out with in terms of plot tends to be a destination a like a starting point and then like two to three things I want to see along the way and the the story becomes exciting for me when I have that without and then what happens is like on the way to those cool interesting events other cool interesting events happen and like you put those in and like and ultimately like who knows is like maybe one of those things that I really thought was a really great thing is gonna get cut completely maybe it's gonna be like much less interesting than some of the things that I came up with just while I was writing like the dream for example in the first book is entirely a pants thing I was like getting to a point in the story was like well I know where we're going but there isn't there isn't like enough stuff here to bridge the gap in like I love mysteries like weird you know created mysteries that that people have to go through I love scavenger hunts and that kind of thing so like finding that was like well maybe there's a scavenger hunting I was like well what kind of scavenger hunt want to be how would it function and it was just like just just wasn't in the book until I got to it and and then as soon as I created it like that section of the book wrote itself very quickly so pants are for sure and but like you know also a ravenous thinner like I you know I think by virtue of pantsing you write a lot of stuff that isn't necessary and so you know I in the revision process to a full reread of the book and then find the stuff that really doesn't need to be there and and I have always been like by virtue of vlogbrothers largely extremely opposed to excess information you know like like if it's not doing at least two things I don't think feel like it should be in the book so I cut a lot I cut and I cut individual words especially in narration I don't do it as much and I'm I'm more okay letting people's dialogue contain superfluous Ness than I am letting like my writing contain superfluous Ness in terms of like narration and expects exposition there it is it's been not a lot of sleep for me lately and and that's also like you know that's kind of specific to April style as well so if I ever write another novel after the sequel then it will be interesting to see if I can like get out of writing as April May because I've done that so much I'm in writing a D&D campaign any advice I love this question I think that it's probably not super different from writing a novel and one reason why I like D&D campaign so much is because in general we see we see like creative endeavors as things that should be mass consumed writing definitely we don't see and there are there are worlds in which this is less the case like the world there's like a great community of short-story science fiction that I read a lot of that stuff that isn't ever going to have a huge audience but I'm a big fan of and so like I'm a I'm a Clark's world subscriber if you are interested in that you should subscribe to Clark's world they have a patreon and they're amazing but you could also get that it's all free like you don't need to pay for it but you if you like what the work like they do amazing editing they find great great work and the you know I'm very rarely disappointed by a story in Clark's world so check check it out and they also have a podcast where it's read to you and you can listen to it in your ears instead of an audiobook which cost money it's amazing what world do we live in as why is the forth of on patreon so but I think D&D campaigns are stories written for very small audiences and and in a way that's like not like no one will judge you for it like this is the thing that's what you're supposed to do and and so I love it as a way of you know like scratching that itch right so I think it but I think it's very similar the difference of course being that like sometimes you have to pants because your players are going to do things that you do not expect them to do and if you fill that enough of the world then and you understand you understand the mechanics of the world you understand the motivations of your villains you understand like you understand sort of like what they might like what what ultimately they're going to discover then you can pants effectively so that's really what it is I think like in a D&D campaign not that I've ever done this but I'd like witnessed other people do it and I am in awe of it is is about like you create you you are not writing the story you are writing the world and you're under and you like need to understand the characters like the non-player character is very deeply in order to sort of like handle it when you're when your players throw you a loop and you're only our into your session a lot of writing that is about about the world rather than about like what's actually happening grace how do you write about the seemingly mundane and make it readable and exciting juxtaposition is how I do it so like big important huge things are happening on then it's like poof let's talk about like like just going through a day of our lives and like and that gives you a chance like gives the reader a chance to like reset a little bit think connect with the characters a little bit and like gives the character is a chance to communicate with the readers which my characters do directly so that yeah man I I don't like that it doesn't necessarily have to be exciting it has to be readable has to be interesting and ultimately like I have a fair amount of experience making things that might seem mundane more exciting which I do in nonfiction a lot and a lot of that it is depth so you you just go deeper and like the deeper you go the more you're like oh actually this is super fascinating and weird and that can be done with things that actually exist it can also be done by thing with things that don't exist like Becky Becky chambers is good at this creating sort of like the beautiful mundane but in in a world that isn't ours so like we have our beautiful mundanes but like if you're if you're in like far future sci-fi or fantasy or something they're gonna have different mundane things they're gonna have different rituals different like celebrations of coming-of-age or like every society has these but creating one from scratch is like she does that really fantastically and like that draws you so much into the world because it makes you curious about like how these people live their lives and it it really gives you depth if you if you haven't read Becky chambers I cannot tell you more times how much how special those books are be surprised if you cry but you probably might because you because you're sad but like more likely because you're happy yeah so ask Becky Tom as somebody does as many things as you do what are things what things are you able to do that help you cope with potential situations that may occur with IBD this mostly is a problem for deadlines meetings live events and one is communicating like I was having a flare recently and wasn't sure like it wasn't sure like what the situation was repay for back release and so I like they wanted me to do some events around the paperback and I was like look you let me get through my colonoscopy and like I'll tell you then and like everybody was super understanding and so I am doing some events I'm not doing a ton but I'm doing something like there are also things that I can do specifically for like two hour period of safety you know drugs I can take and I've experienced with the experiments with that travel can also be hard if if it's like during a flare like obviously you're not having access to a bathroom during takeoff and landing or turbulence is bad and so like that's that's the the practicalities of working around that but in terms of like ultimately writing is a career that does actually mesh better with IBD or freelancing in general because like like for example my mornings tend to be bad and so I just don't schedule stuff in the mornings and then if I'm writing during that time then like it doesn't matter if I like have to stop or I can take my laptop at the bathroom with me which have not never done and also I give myself a break you know I I know that like ultimately like everyone has limitations and like that might just be like the limitations of our own minds like we we are all limited by our minds not like my mind is better than yours but like there there is a limit at which like a human mind cannot like function past a certain capacity you can't write faster than a certain amount and like I but like I also have this other limitation that is you know my you know chronic disease but like other people have different chronic diseases that I don't have and like we all have limitations and so like just understanding that this is like this is my normal and this is my speed and like this is in like what I'm having when I'm sick like enough I can't do something then like I can't do it and that's okay I'm just gonna watch a TV show that I'm probably gonna watch anyway eventually so that's another thing that I that I tend to think about is like if I'm going to watch the expanse you know I like it the expanse comes out I'm going to watch it eventually I shouldn't be ashamed for watching it when like maybe I have a deadline cuz like I'm gonna watch it right if I'm watching something I don't love then that's a problem and like I do that you know if I'm watching like boxing clips on YouTube which has not never happened then like that's not a great use of my time but eventually I'm gonna watch the expanse and so like this is this is time that will be spent doing this one way or another so I don't I don't get down on myself for that fiction titles are difficult nonfiction titles are boring which do you like better for clarity fiction titles are difficult nonfiction titles are difficult like titling a video is a freaking thing man especially nowadays I'm click through it's matter so much but I do for clarity I hate them both it's it's wild that you can like spend you know a lot of time hundreds of hours working on hundreds of thousands of words but then you can spend like 20 hours working on four words that's that that's we haven't named the sequel yet which is not through lack of trying but I think it would be equally hard to name a non-fiction book like I think that nominating a nonfiction book like you got it especially those little sub heads that they have they've all got great subheads let's pick one out this one's called careful a user's guide to our injury-prone minds see that like people worked hard on that the I guess the thing is like oftentimes they have like that one word title careful or like deep economy epic measures epic measures is a good title got like some some old feminist stuff the chalice and the blade that's a great freaking title that's a great time for a nonfiction book the poisoned city oh yeah this book oh that's a great title doctor Tatiana's sex advice to all creation great title how do you keep your focus on the task and avoid distractions of constantly updating things like Twitter yes I understand the irony of asking here I don't I ultimately like I like for my books I have to understand social media and I have to market them so like those are two different reasons to be on Twitter and I get drawn back in when I probably shouldn't sometimes but but I also find it to be a source of inspiration I'm almost running out of batteries here so let's let's speed along and see if we can get through everybody's what would happen to your currently unfinished novel if you died this person asks I've written my editor about how I think it ends which you know that's how George Martin did it I wrote like basically summary like when I got to the point where I'm kind of knew how it was gonna end I like wrote it all down which is actually really great for me too because then I had an outline let me write a lot faster what's your favorite thing to write character development betrayals world building I love climaxes I don't love betrayals I love fights I like I like to write fights between characters I like to write like active antagonism I like it when I cry I like togetherness but I also I like you know I like to write those scenes where everything sort of comes together and it's like oh my god so I hope I can do that how do I not hate everything I write if you hate what you're writing it's because you have good like you have taste at least like you know what you don't like about it my advice is to with you if you hate what you're writing as you're writing it ignore that because that's lies if you hate what you're writing after you've written it and given it a day or two and you come back and read it that like what you know what what don't you like about it and like go and look at what you like about some other things that you like and like change it that's like I often will hate what I'm writing when I'm writing it and then come back and be like well this is like 80% good do you ever have to very good but this is from vihart but contradictory ideas for where a story should go how do you choose and what alternate Hank universe Hank universes have we missed out on yeah I usually find one that I like a lot usually I'm like oh I mmm it tends to be that like I write like the first thing that comes to my mind and sometimes that's the thing and then if I have another idea usually it's so much better than what I've that then what I've written then that I like immediately deleted that this doesn't always happen sometimes I want like work very hard back and forth between like oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean I can't talk about that because its sequel stuff so that's what's really present in my mind right now but but yeah absolutely and I can't tell you what alternate Hank universe's you've missed out on but I can tell you yes very like too good but contradictory ideas does happen and and then I I pick based on what I think the reader will like more and how do I decide what a reader will like more well my friends I have no idea if I could explain how consciousness works then I'd have a very high-paying job at Google Google

Channel: hankschannel

Views: 67,612

Rating: 4.9740262 out of 5

Keywords: books, novels, writing, process, novelist, hank green, science fiction

Id: -tdXeuiAafU

Length: 32min 43sec (1963 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 07 2019