Brandon Sanderson - 318R - #10 (Plotting)

alright guys I am back from the Middle East so yeah nah no more substitutes you're stuck with me for the last three weeks Oh but so today what we're going to do is I'm going to kind of do a half plotting lesson and a half prose lesson so we're kind of going to cover those two things because next week I want to dig into agents and into the other part of business and then the last week I want to have a massive Q&A so that's the plan moving forward and once again for those of you in the lecture portion which is most of you here the final will just be a pizza party you are not obligated to show up if you have come every week and turned in your slips every week you will get an A for your your massive one credit hour of of English what's elective credit which I'm sure is massively important to all of your different majors but if you want to show up we'll have a pizza party but made you something else I don't know we may yet there will be another chance to ask me questions theoretically assuming I'm in the country which I think I am so let's talk about plots this is a weird word like it's one of those words that I think about and I'm like you know I've always used as a writer right this is this is integral to integral I don't know which word that is but it's really important to the stuff that you do as a writer plotting but when you sit down and say what is plot well what is plot tell me what is what is plot a sequence of events yeah a sequence event so basically everything right yeah Lee does anyone have any definitions it's not just everything that's in the book that's the problem right we talk about plot as in I and I do my little lecture where I separated you know plot setting character right and conflict except the plot is kind of the character - right because the plot is what's happening to the character and the plot is as you're discovering saying the plot is basically all the stuff so we kind of try to divide it out and talk about what things move your story along but when I last time I talked about plot what we really were talking about was pacing that's what one of the things that people mean when they say plot when they say the plot was interesting usually this means the pacing was good in the story it's one of those things you'll have to learn as writers when you're getting feedback that your neck I you know the plot was so so they'll mean pacing another thing people use plot to mean is if it has good twists and turns they'll use that to mean plot but that's not necessarily the only hallmark of a good plot I believe we talked last time but I'll reamp asides not every story needs a really cool twist at the ending that's one type of story and one type of story that I happen to enjoy a lot but a story that doesn't have a cool twist that gives you exactly what you're expecting can still be a very fat satisfying story with a good plot even though it's not the twisty turny style plot so when people say plot they might mean one of those two things but for you you can't have to say you know what is what is this plot stuff what does it mean to me when I talk a lot about plot I talk about promises that your plot is kind of a mix between how your story is paced and what promises your story is making all stories make promises stories sometimes make the wrong promises did I share with you guys last time we talked about plot the story of the other author who got published around the same time I did you guys remember that one and then you know everyone got to the end of his story and they're like oh this isn't for anybody right this is all because of promises and one of your challenges if we kind of break down plot into three regions right you've got your first third your second third your end third your first act your second act your middle act we're not going to talk about the Hollywood pace and we're going to kind of break it down in the opening of your story you need to do certain things what makes a good plot for the first third of a story well let's let's break it down and talk to me one what do you guys what makes you enjoy the beginning of a story what draws you in major that I'm like okay main character that you like and care about great anything else two poles you guys in draws you in what do you like in the first third light-hearted interactions between okay light-hearted interactions between characters great well it pulls you guys in yeah interesting interesting storylines there's something interesting okay like a interesting storyline meeting something happening or is it more like a premise yeah an industry protocol the premise can grab me right when I read the opening chapter a book and I'm like whoa this premise they're cloning dinosaurs right that's a plot thing that we're going to write a story about people clone dinosaurs and make a theme part for them that is a one sentence excellent plot boil down that is a great premise and that can be a hook thank you they can draw you and I'm talking more about the hook for a hole first third than a hook for like the first line but yeah if I get into him like I get the promise that yeah well let me ask you these things we've had three things here interesting character who said an interesting character what promise does an interesting character and the opening parts of a book make is it that they're going to stay interesting and do something cold I would say definitely it is they're gonna stay interesting what else do you guys think an interesting character think of one that you've enjoyed in the beginning of the story what kind of promises that character is making to you yeah you're going to experience important moments in the life of this person to whom you were bonding right that is your promise that this story is going to be somehow very important to development of this person okay the wente bit well go ahead we'll go to the window interesting characters like Sherlock Holmes yeah is really developed but you're going to be able to see more of their interesting that's true yeah yeah Sherlock Holmes is a great example particularly in the more recent kind of versions of him the BBC one in particular it in his case it's almost the train wreck sort of thing right it is so gruesome how bad he is at dealing with people but so fascinating and how brilliant he is at the same time that you can just watch this you know this beautiful disaster happening and it's entertaining right and so the promise when he is like that is going to be that he's going to be brilliant you're going to like that and he's going to be weird and you're going to like that yeah yeah what about the banter who as Adam mentioned the banter someone I hear banter they what is what's the promise that that is making to you that they'll still be friends yeah yeah what are the promises if you start your book with banter with two characters that get along well and have banter yeah right yeah yeah the book might be serious at times but you are going to have a book where periodically you were going to laugh right you don't have the interesting banter that's really fun for two characters and then it end up being like this terrible Holocaust story unless there are other promises alongside it right and there are some stories that kind of work off of this sort of thing like life is beautiful which is here this is fun this is light-hearted also it's set in Germany right before World War Two and you're like oh no in the main characters Jewish yeah so you have this sort of they can play off of what's going on um and things like this but promises it's about promises now let's talk about what was the uu what was yours over here oh interesting premise the interesting premise what's that promise that is going to stay interesting you may be right that this is probably you know Sanderson's a third law sort of stuff here's an interesting premise the story is going to be about digging into that premise exploring ramifications a lot of science fiction stories of great science fiction stories are built around this concept the opening promises are this is going to be interesting we're going to dig into this and by the end you will be amazed / horrified / you know interested whatever it is right you can go lots of different ways with these different things Dan wells a good friend of mine at writer he has had he has a book called I am NOT a serial killer it's a wonderful book it's delightful it's about a teenage sociopath who is fascinated by serial killers and the number one criticism he has gotten for this book does anyone read it any guesses what the number one criticisms people don't like the book what it is is it that they don't see him actually behaving like as you're coming no but it's not that it's a good guess go ahead very special illness the hope here in Reverse yes the fact that there are supernatural elements that is the number one complaint about the book is that people pick it up because it's like oh this is a interesting sociopath serial killer type story and it turns out that there is a demon that's killing people that the the kid interacts with it's a great book you should definitely definitely read that book unless that sort of thing just is like creepy to you like overly creepy but the number one complaint is that it's a matter of promises in fact when we were workshopping that book in writing group we all do it Dan include it because we kept giving feedback saying this doesn't feel like a monster book dan you've said you know we know when you brainstorm this it's going to be about monsters this doesn't feel that way it's the supernatural elements are going to come out of nowhere and he tried to work them in they mentions them if they're not nothing but there's like some hints it's not enough for some readers and some readers put the book down right then because it is as a breaking a promise my question to you guys then is how then do you have surprises in books if what I'm saying is if you break your promises your story can go off the rails and it really can if you break promises you can have problems like my friend the writer had what you have small surprises okay small surprises as early as possible write write write write them in such a way that they feel inevitable okay so this is kind of the classic phrase and these are both different things we'll talk about a bolt this is the classic phrase that we use um in writing that the best twists are surprising yet inevitable that says surprising and available I am so whatever whatever I know you guys all want moles handwriting back I know what you wrote on your little slips but you're not getting any mole handwriting today you're getting Sanderson handwriting and no way I put that up there but yeah anyway surprising yet inevitable right um I have extra letters and both of those yeah so my guess as far as good surprises would either be that they're foreshadowed or that they are fulfilling a promise but they're doing it in a way that they're not expected right so this is this is kind of the the the kind of unicorn of of writing a book unicorn meaning the mythical thing that you hunt for that's really hard to get is that you have this twist that is foreshadowed all the way along but nobody knows it's foreshadowed and when it happens the the reader says oh everything just changed and very few books pull this off a lot of books pull it off in a small way very few books make the whole story about that Ender's Game is the big one that comes to mind that is a balloon as there are other books that do it as well the prestige pulls it off and and things like this but it is really difficult to do but it's really cool when it happens you don't have to write that kind of story but you can have this foreshadow thing the other answer is the small the small promises early on and this can be really really helpful for you for instance my friend who wrote the book that was a classic fantasy for for three quarters and then a modernist upheaval of fantasy tropes for the last third right you this is a really hard book to write because who's it for right but there is the possibility that with the small surprises along the way or the small hints along the way you could give the reader this feeling that wow this is going to be about overcoming my own expectations for this story again hard to do but that's an extreme case a lot of films and books sorry I was thinking of films because I talk about a lot of films we'll do this by having the intro the the quick intro I am the name for it just lost fled my head but it's like that Indiana Jones beginning right you guys remember the beginning of the first Indiana Jones movie which is the little quest to get the idol and then lots of cool traps with a dastardly villain um this is the movie in microcosm to set the tone for how the rest of the movie is going to play out a lot of books do this as well you don't need an actual full little story but you can devise a scene at the beginning of your story that sets the tone okay so let's say you wanted to write a book that had the witty banter between characters but was going to turn into something dark gruesome and soul wrenching by the end okay let's just say you wanted to do this what could you do in the first third of your story to give people the hints that this is where the story is going despite the light-hearted levity any ideas any suggestions yell go right here and then I'm going to do the back I'm sorry I've been ignoring you guys more grounded in what is going to come even the looseness this been going on it's going to a dirt place right have references to that right right right right I like your saying this it occurs to me you're going to have the fun banter have the fun banter between two friends at their third friend's funeral and make it grim banter right they're like we love this guy you could tell we love this guy he we were three you know friends at battle and he just got his head chopped off because that's what happens when you're mercenaries and then there's grim humor because that's how you deal with the humor that's that's certainly one way there were other hands up here how would you maybe go about it wish turning her romantic foot into over histrionic and visually impaired to see and scary projects plays yeah yeah very good very good were there a go ahead you could also have like bad things happen like instead of like everything any cattle and bright every little finger every little joke or prank right early on if you have like one ends up and just snowballs and just quit blows up the characters face and it might laugh it off so that like somebody get hurt right right going to be more careful and then right right you give this sense of foreboding instead of you know the friends laughing the funeral it's where the reader starts to say wait a minute these people are being foolhardy and they're you're almost waiting for the bad thing to happen because you know how foolhardy they're being right right you can kind of have a parallel thing where the way the characters are acting causes the reader to think in a different way certainly let's let's give you the other example let's say you're constructing a story where you're worried about having the same problem that Dan had that you don't introduce supernatural elements until after the first third of the book is finished what can you do in the first third of your book that will not you know aute say oh we're writing an epic fantasy right yeah it's very easy to say fantastical elements by having a wizard in Chapter one what can you do that preserves the sense of grounded in the real world like the story he wanted to write yet give hints that supernatural things are coming could they stumble upon evidence of something supernatural like that it already happened but not actually know how it happens to like whoa something destroy that whole wall what could have done that right right right the really weird they're really weird Wow this this is odd sort of Hank we call it hanging Lantern on it yeah yeah yeah go ahead right right right right either the main character or a side character is very uh is bringing this stuff up good way to see your relevance the character so like here's some creepy guys talked about penis on the street right five okay yeah yeah yeah what if like the first scene was from that creatures okay you see yep yep and someone and things are a little bit off but they don't explain that it's my right right the kind of the classic prologue approach which is use the prologue to set a tone so that the reader knows yeah um go ahead like the news or something right Brown is one okay yeah these are all thoughts that you can go on I just want to kind of start planting these seeds in your head you'll if you look at books you read a lot of them do this very skillfully and McCaffrey's dragonriders books she uses an epigraph which is a little thing you put at the beginning right says this is in the star system this has this sort of thing it's only like one little paragraph but it's a very scientific sort of almost like - info dumpy but not quite there where your eyes blur and you're like oh it's like reading a survey from from from a probe that passed by but it's only a paragraph it's really short so you don't have time to get bored of the book and then it goes into epic fantasy mode where you're like ah this is an epic fantasy that's really a lost earth colony so it's a science fiction being a fantasy imposter and that was very important and that people understood that her book was you know a science fiction book posing as a fantasy book for total reasons because as the series progressed they discovered computers they discovered you know a you know the gene breeding things that made the Dragons and stuff like that's very relevant to the plot of the series but you could very much see that someone might get to book four and they find the computer and feel this is not my cool fantasy book what happened you've ruined it but since she was very upfront with it from the beginning ye you it almost it gives away a little of the surprise at the same time preserving the tone and that's a balance you're going to have to decide where you reside on yeah question and you feel like the underlying viewpoint of the TV show like you're watching some right NCIS something like that where they go in and they're like everything's hard facts and then they'd be like a psychic who gets everything right yes and is it they're sitting there thinking like they keep me unsettled because sometimes it'll make it seem like well maybe a supernatural thing maybe not right hard evidence into it that way like we should that unsettled and because of the way they do the promises yeah I would say that that's a that's a that's a strange case because you have promises from previous episodes and you have writers coming on that are saying what new can we do with the premises we have and some writers will shift a story one direction and other writers will shift it another and so television has this problem that a lot of what you're doing won't have which is different writers having a different vision for what it's going to be but yes like if you're doing this nce is and what you love about is the crime scene investigation and suddenly there's this episode where psychics are real guys you're like what the this is this is the wrong fulfilling a promise or things like that for the story that I wanted to enjoy I would definitely say that's the sort of thing you can't you want to avoid now this first third sort of thing again a lot of it has to do with tone genre is less important than tone it's the sort of thing where you want to be surprising you want to have good twists and turns at the same time you don't want the reader to feel that their book that they were promised turned into a completely different book by the end let's talk oh yeah good no good right rightly so is getting frustrated because she's mapping answers to her questions right questions so that idea is that no promises are being right there's some ways to you can satisfy any answers Chris sometimes artists okay okay we're going to move we're going to erase my embarrassing board writing and we're going to move to the middle third because this is really an issue for the middle third it but no it bleeds into the first third as well and this is the how do you make the middle interesting um how do you make the middle work now answering your question specifically I think you need to give some answers my feeling as you know your writing group shouldn't be telling you this they should be expressing their emotions your as your professor I get a little more leeway if you are never fulfilling promises in a satisfying way the promise you're making to the reader is they will never get satisfying for answers and so you as a writer should try to withhold less than you think you need to and most writers have a lot of new writers have this problem they withhold too much they don't let themselves pred out the awesomeness of their story if you can't make the discovery as interesting is the question you're going to have a lot of problems with your stories and so having saying okay here are the ten questions we have I'm going to answer this one it'll raise more questions but it will be a really satisfying answer that's what you're looking for and I would suggest that you try to find a way to do that more often in your fiction there are certain um there's certain methods of writing it's very that's much harder as a discovery writer to do this than it is for an outliner to dole out answers that work because a lot of discovery writers are about the questions and a lot of television shows because most television shows are discovery written by necessity meaning they right a pilot they try to make it really intriguing and interesting and then they get a pickup like all right give us you give us five episodes like okay we need to make these really intriguing like a full season and you're like wow but they don't know because they don't even know if they'll have a job at the end of the season and things like this and so you get a lot of television shows where they're really really good raising questions and they are utter rubbish at answering those questions in satisfying way you guys watch shows like this this is a discovery writing problem and I would not say that these are bad writers I'd say that it's the medium pushes them that direction because of the way that the serial nature of what they're doing and so they often have to like only have the only know they have they'll have to answer something that they've been building up for for a long time but they'll only have two episodes to think of it and do it you have a luxury over them in that you are not bound by the serial nature in the same way you're writing a trilogy you might have some of this but you need to be able to make good on your promises and a reader is going to want to trust you now if you've already built up trust by perhaps publishing other books previously you can get away with more I can get away with more than you can I can do things like you know I can have the way of Kings the way of Kings is a book that for those who haven't read it it starts with a huge pile of world-building for the magic system and a big assassination scene then it jumps to a character's viewpoint who then dies and then the next character's viewpoint is someone that was there in that with them who is now eight months later as a slave and then it jumps to a new characters viewpoint and that's your first four chapters of the book I'm making promises that that you're going to get a lot of epic scope but I'm also making promises that you're going to have to work hard to figure out this book and it's it is a huge learning curve I can get away with that because goodwill propels people through those chapters and then the payoffs for those chapters can be that much bigger because of the I can kind of hit the ground running you don't have that goodwill yet so I would suggest that you find a way to make good on a few promises early in your book so that the reader knows okay if I put up with this the answers are going to be super cool and great and here's the thing if you don't do that and the readers stick with you because you're a good writer their expectation for those promises is only going to get higher and higher and higher to the point that you can't fulfill them that's also the advantage of giving some small fulfillment of promises early on is it you know kind of Sates their appetite a little bit and so that the expectation doesn't just go through the roof okay so middles yes go ahead so I'm just wondering like with that question I guess I'm thinking about Ender's Game yes because the way that that is set up there's like the other point of view and yeah so almost gives you like two sets of questions right so what Ender's Game it angers game is a brilliantly plotted book and what enter game is doing it is it is using a couple of plotting mechanisms the promises and the bulk of its pacing is based around the kids fighting in the the school and it's the underdog sports story that I talked about last time I plotted and this you know I did I guess talk to you about bracketing on bracketing is the idea that you're going to introduce elements of your story and kind of this is just one way of looking at plot not the only way by far treat them almost like computer code where you need to close your brackets and you open your brackets so you open your bracket with Ender's Game and it's kind of like kid in space is you know away quote-unquote let me explain that he start understanding he's on the ship he's been pulled away from everything his nose it's this fish-out-of-water story it's kind of your introduction into ender right this is our initial thing the bracket the end bracket to that is ender is in control right so in the beginning he is a little kid who who is away from everything he gives very early in those scenes if you look signs of Enders competence to promise that by the end ender will be in control as a bracketing of this story device now the main story is not that you might say that the main story that we also add our questions as he starts to learn about the formics and things like that there are all these sort of what happened why did they leave how did we beat them are they coming back all of these things but the main story is dragon army and this is your underdog sports story so you've got you've got kind of three bracketed plots I would say with with a smaller one of you know and ER psychology and another one of Enders family right but this is your big clot so we kind of get through these guys pretty quickly and sort of set up we're going to have questions we very quickly get to you this is going to be fun battle school you're like a raw recruits in the army the majority of everything going on here is ender is in the army he has has a succession of really hard tests it gets harder and harder for him but he achieves these it's kind of this building to the ender is in control sort of thing that is a bracket to I'm a poor kid in space we bracket then the questions with the the twist right the twist ending is our answer to all these questions I would say the Enders in control is where he is abandoned right the battle school and everybody and he's gone his own way he's no longer under the control of all of these people my bracketing needs to go out further if you can't tell but we bracket dragon army which is the bulk of the story with him finally getting pulled away to one-on-one training and things like this we have this nice bulk of the story in the middle is you know underdog sports story and we actually kind of do the psychology and the family we twist the brackets around and put those brackets here which is something you can do in a book that doesn't work for the computer metaphor yes how does this version like first as Ender's Game I don't know if this is ours did you write a book intending to write a sequel yeah any launches for instance right but later it's so successful you decide you want to you've already got this book how do you do that for a series afternoon so for a series after you've done this I would say that the the thing you do sit down with your friends brainstorm where this could go ask yourself what questions are left for the character at the end and entering the next part of their life and how can you pick that up and build another story around it speaker for the dad as I understand someone who knows Scott Card better could might be able to contradict this I believe speaker the Dead was originally conceived not as an Enders game story that the original ideas were not but then he sat down and plotted it as a sequel to Ender's Game because of the success of Ender's Game more or less yeah I think by the plotting stage he knew but it was the sphere that was most beautiful uh-huh and then as ready you realize that he needs to flesh out some more stuff in it in his game and so he goes back to the short story okay short story ends in the whole book okay okay so it's it's it happened earlier than that he'd written the short story he'd gone on to write a new book he went back and wrote the whole Ender's thing got it yeah um so bracketing this bracketing is a useful way of looking at plots and that you're like okay I have a main plot and I have kind of what's going to be the big part pacing for my story and I'd say for a dress game it is the dragon army stop but you know the bane bulk of the time may not be the lofty questions you're wanting to answer and Ender's Game the lofty questions are probably these sorts of things you know the world-building questions and ender coming to take control over his life rather than being pushed around by everyone who wants to push him around and so you can raise these little guys quickly and open those brackets and then very quickly get to this or you can get to this and then you can start seeding these things in to open them and close them later on this method has helped me a great deal in kind of visualizing a lot of plots and realizing how I can kind of Nestle and embed certain plots within other plots the most important thing I would say if you're looking at this method is to decide why are they going to turn the page go back to the previous plotting lecture that we did and start asking that question what makes them go page the page how can I build the bulk of my story in a way that that's going to be really interesting and how can I then take these other things that I want to do and how can I add them in as subplots to the bulk of this main plot all right let me ask you guys this though I started a little earlier with this question how do you how do you make the middle interesting now granted I've just kind of talked about it a bunch so maybe there may not be more to talk on this but I think there is I think the middle for me is the toughest part of the book it's not always the toughest part of the book for everyone middle Sten tend to be harder for outliners than they do for discovery writers discovery writers tend to have the most trouble of endings but every writer is different for me definitely those middles how do you guys go about writing a story where the middle is interesting first let me back up why do I even imply then the middle might not be interesting anyone hit the middle of a story been like okay we're just spinning our heels right go ahead I know how yeah right right right right right right right right no you you just hit exactly in the head there was another hand over here but was it the kind of same thing yeah well for me it's usually because I'm in love with the characters at the beginning it's all kind of new experience and at the end there's this thing that I want to get to it so it's kind of similar to this and that's always going to be exciting and right right right this happens a lot and it's almost like you know when you're a writer new or experienced a lot of times you're like whoa cool premise Wow and what if at the end cool and and then you like dot dot dot and then we get there right and this is an issue this is a big issue because the middle is in many ways the hardest but also most important part of your story because you can't just have your promises and Ghul you got to earn those endings this is our foreshadowing and foreshadowing and this terminology does not need to be the kind of plot twist foreshadowing when we say foreshadowing a lot it's the sort of things that come with F that you say dunk dunk done after right but the foreshadowing methods I'm using right now are just kind of the earning the ending for instance plot device or plot is an apprentice plot kind of you've got a little bit of this in Ender's Game to someone who is not good at something at the end does something awesome your middle is the training the steps along the way the foreshadowing that they will earn that ending by seeing by scene showing them getting better this is your progress we talked about last time your sense of progress page by page you can't afford as a writer to just kind of brush this off and say yeah yeah yeah the ending is going to be cool let's get there as soon as we can your job is the writer you tall order is to make every chapter as interesting as that explosive beginning or ending that you are so excited about this is why sometimes the discovery writers are better at this it's because the discovery writers sit down and say what cool thing do I want to have happen today and then they just go with it whereas a lot of the outline writers are like alright next point on the outline is this alright that's going to be boring I'll just get it over with right where is what you need to be able to do either way is take this thing say I need to show this character being really exceptional of what they're doing and I want the scene to be different and distinctive from the last three times they've showed I've shown them being exceptional in some different way as they progress toward being super exceptional that's tough question are coming because I'll have like specific specific certain time aha but they're very some of them can be very far right but I don't know how to put them where they're supposed to go but at the same time not seem like the entire story is one one what to another lifetime job ok this is a difficult challenge I have read pieces by writers that have worked that have done this but it is super hard I would recommend to you someone who does this in the extreme is Isaac Asimov and foundation if you haven't read it you may look at that because he does some very cool things where thousands of years are passing between chapters in the story and they have all new characters which is why foundation was kind of was this big triumph is it's a trilogy that covers 10th like tens of thousands of years with new characters all along but a cohesive story you're hopefully not going tens of thousands of years but you can look at some things like this and say ok this is how this works now it is really difficult to create a cohesive narrative that doesn't feel artsy maybe you want artsy but doesn't feel like this kind of experimental piece like I love foundation best science fiction trilogy out there right but it does have this sort of wow I can't believe you're doing this and pulling it off sort of aspect to it that has an almost sort of you know it works because you've never seen it done before sort of thing which the question is how do you do this pulling a character through find some people who've done before see what they did see if you like it I'm not sure I can give you specific advice do know that the route that a reader will give you more of a they'll give you more leeway in this than you think it's always surprising to me that a year passes in a Harry Potter book right because they're at the early ones are pretty short you don't feel like you're sitting a year's worth of stuff and yet a year is passed and it's ok to have and you know two weeks later they were in the library doing this it's when you say and 20 years later they were in the library doing this we're like whoa whoa whoa whoa out in 20 years someone becomes a completely different person so like a couple little vignettes or like snapshot yeah what happens in the screen like you know like two months passed by during which like Ron's right right this is the grim dark Harry Potter Ron's mom went to war right she kind of gives you this feeling that nothing you're not going to miss anything important I'll show you the important stuff she's really good at that so another person who does this really well is Robin hobb particularly in the later assassin books but all through them you're kind of getting this whole character's whole life and sometimes five years will pass between like entries in his journal because it's all epistolary and that epistolary nature of it really helps because you feel like you know he's sitting down and writing it all cohesively so he's making a story out of it um and and it works because it's got like a consistent voice he's like I'm gonna go write the last ten years of my life and I'll skip these five years because they're boring but the characters being developed is the one who's writing the story as well like I talked about in the viewpoint one that's another way it's done I don't know if I can spend much more time on this because it's a really tough challenge and there's there are bunches of ways to try to tackle it you'll have to find your own alright so any other thoughts on how to make your middles interesting any suggestions no no you need s enjoy what you got go for it well last time dancing fun and games with the premise and kind of explore the premise and who the characters are during that time yeah finding games with the premise I want to see a failure pretty nice failure pretty massive failure yeah um I don't think I wrote oh I did write it up on here kind of one of my answers is to - this is this next line but let's go ahead massive failure was anyone else have some things um let me talk about this one for a minute then if I don't cover it we can have you making things change is an important aspect of storytelling and if you're just feeling like oh my middle is just to get me here then the problem is you're ignoring this idea of change great plots and a lot of the great plots and stories I read at the end of every chapter you can say what changed and you can answer it something pretty dramatic changes in most chapters either it's the characters awareness their understanding a major clue was revealed a major failure happened things went wrong or a minor failure happened or they finally tried this thing they've been planning and it doesn't work or it does something wrong or what not having stuff change so that the reader is always feeling again like there's this progress that they're not stuck in this kind of mire a lot of times when people talk about books that they're very bored by or if they're like I love this book but there's this section right for me and it's not even that long but I love the the tad Williams memory sorrow and thorn but there are a couple sections where it feels like four chapters nothing changes you know the there there's a sequence where when the characters is like visiting the Fae in this world and it's like it feels like forever it's probably only like two chapters right because this is how it happens with books but it feels like I'm like oh come on have something moved gets get back to the plot when really if things had changed that the state has had change little bit more I would have been interested in it I often bring up a time where I had a lot of problem with this in one of my books and I think I referenced it last but let me bring it up again and this is the character say said in hero of Ages in hero of Ages there's a character named say Zed who it's kind of like the pret the pitch for him is a missionary for all religions he lives in a world where all religions have been stamped out he's learned about them all and he goes around finding well but trying to fit religions to people like you might put on a coat right he's like oh there was this great religion once that did this and this and this and I think you should be you should you know be a worshiper there's religion because nobody has any missionaries and where he's like the missionary for everybody and in the third book is some terrible things have happened in his life and he is starting to wonder what is it that he himself actually believes right it's a crisis of faith for the character who was the faith and moral Center for the other characters throughout the course of the books this sequence was really hard to write and in the first draft it was so boring so terribly boring because it's like seven chapters of saves it being like oh I don't believe anything anymore oh every mile ah I'm supposed to be the moral Center but I don't have the answers and it's like seven chapters of just you know beating your head against the wall boringness okay the problem I had is I'm like that's how depression actually feels right when you get sent into a massive depressive thing you feel like you are trapped in a world that has never changed it has never been different it will never be different and so I was accurately I feel representing what it's like to be a person who has had you know this huge bout of depression come upon them problem is it was really really bad storytelling while also being very authentic um the way that I fixed this was with this kind of method of saying okay Satan is going to try through the course of the book to find of all these religions that he has been preaching to people which one is the right one which is the actual true religion and he is going to look at each one and if he finds some big contradiction when it or something like that he thinks that a true religion couldn't have we'll eliminate it and he's going to go through all of these religions what this did is is it actually let me change things every chapter in each different setting and seeing he was in he could be mulling over one of these religions and talk about it to himself and show how he's like no it can't be that one and casting it out which evokes the sense of despair as you're like cezzah this isn't how religion works plus also you're not going to find what you're looking for but it's the sense of dread as things get worse and worse so there is even though he's doing a repetitive Act there is change in progress to it changing but it also kind of gives you this moment we're about halfway through that he can be like I've done them all now I've had my big moment of oh woe is me all this stuff that we started with before we built two instead and the sequence ended up working really well the majority of readers who read it highlighted is one of their favorite parts of the books is his kind of journey through these stories so it jumped from being the worst by far aspect to the book - one of the highlights this is kind of this idea of change promises and pacing that makes a plot work and it's interesting because it was such a small change the revision on that only took a week or so to get done but it transformed the sequence 100% so any other coil we need to do endings don't we okay any other questions about middles any other ideas on this alright the more you practice the better you be and I wish I didn't have to say that so often because I wish that as your professor I could just be like oh yeah here's the exact way to do it the exact way to do is practice a little bunch of times and get a sense for why things are working and why they aren't for you so endings I'm not going to focus as much on endings as I did on the first two that's because this is we've kind of covered this but the idea is to fulfill your promises in a satisfying way surprising can also be handy depending on the type of story you're writing but satisfying is what you're looking for you can sometimes set yourself up in a problem where there is no satisfying situation let me let me give you an example from a writer I know her name is Charlene Harris we share an agent she is a dear she cut has come to my signings couple times and just shown up and she's like a super you know mega bestseller she just kind of shows up oh hi Brandon um she she wrote The True Blood books right um which I've got another funny story on I'll tell you that in a minute um but I was talking to my agent I haven't actually read the books myself I was talked to my agent he said so Charlene set herself up for dismal failure because every read sheet she had like multiple love interests possible for the main character at the end of her story and you know very as far as I understand wrote very well to that ending letting each of the different love interests be a possible and suitor for the main character and then at the end of the book she picked one and three-quarters of her audience were so mad right because three court you know the other three guys who didn't get picked we're like we're those the fans of those were like this is the worst book ever this is terrible um you you know you have betrayed I've read you know how many copies are different volumes of the Tru Blood books and ah yeah yeah so I mean this isn't a fault of bad writing this is just something to be aware of that it is possible to have an ending like this there is no satisfying conclusion for everyone you're going to have to ask yourself what is the type of story on plant writing what is the the fulfillment of it for myself but at the same time you might want to be aware that it's good to foreshadow and give promises how it's going to turn out I don't think any people who read the Twilight books actually thought that the werewolf dude was going to be who Bella ended up with even though they like could hold out an outside hope when it happened answer was not how dare you it was oh I knew it all along if I have written these books the werewolf dude would have been I don't know I haven't read all the books I read the first one but I haven't read the books but you know how me foreshadowing kind of giving your indications can be helpful for this do you realize that sometimes there's no way to be absolutely 100% satisfying to all of your readers but that said learning to analyze what your promises are and the introductions of your stories and then trying to figure out how to give those conclusions at the end that will be a nice tie up of that idea very very helpful skill as a writer and is what's going to make your endings work you discovery writers who and who here considers themselves a discovery writer yeah okay so it's about half a little over half you discovery writers this is particularly important to get to like the last third of your book and then sit down and decide what have been my promises from the beginning of this book why are people reading this book what is it they want to get out of it and try to make a list of those even though you're just kind of discovering your way through it you are you outliners you probably want to go ahead and let people read the intro to your book say what kind of promises do you think I'm making what kind of a story do you expect this to be and what kind of ending you know emotional ending are you looking for very hard to get these things out of right of readers sometimes so like I don't know what the end is going to be I just want to read them you want to get the tonal ending right this is going to be a big action set piece is that what you expect for my ending give them you know the first half of your book and then ask them that let's move on from this aspect I think I hit endings pretty hard last time we did plotting any other questions on plot knowing that we will have a big session of just QA and a couple of weeks all right let's take a brief moment to talk a little bit more about prose the windowpane sort of thing so when I took this class from Dave years ago when I was a young spry man some years ago there's one of the lectures he did that I've always really liked where he talked about this idea of pros or he talked about what about style writers get really worried about style right what is my voice is what they want to know what is my voice and I think this is fueled a little bit by writing books and by writing classes and literature classes in particular well where the professor will talk about an author's voice Capital V they say it like a professor the voice of the character and things like this like not the hair - the voice of the author not character voices but your voice and writers get really hung up on what's going to be my style what's going to be my voice I don't think you should worry about this I think that in general this is going to be an amalgamation of what you have read and what you like in writing as you practice you will come to have your own voice to the point that it will almost be frustrating to you because you will fall into doing certain things over and over again um that are hallmarks of your voice and it will get a little bit frustrating oh I promised I tell a story about Charlotte I'll tell that in a minute so what's that promises promises I'll tell I'll fulfill that it's a fun story um so what's that yeah this one will be fulfilled I gotta tell the story it's a it's so fun it's anyway but back here to this don't stress voice at least your voice it will come naturally do ask yourself what styles of prose do you like why do you like them and how do they enhance the story did I talk to you guys about Orwell I don't think I did so when Dave topped this class he talked a little bit about this idea George Orwell he is the first one that I know of that described prose as the pane of glass through which you experience the story and George Orwell said what he likes to do is he likes to make the pros as translucent as possible so you can see through it to the action happening on the other side some writers conversely like to write like they're creating a stained glass window and when you look through the prose you can see the story on the other side but if you step back and look at the stained glass window you're like wow this thing is beautiful in its own right it kind of distracts from the story but that's ok because oftentimes the story matches it very well the big people in fantasy who do this guy Gavriel Kay and his recent books is really good at it Jean wolf is very good at it Ursula Gwyn can turn a phrase Pat Rothfuss is the big fantasy epic fantasy writer where the prose is more turns into more stained glass than it does the windowpane I'd prefer windowpane I prefer to try to eliminate most of the stuff about the prose that will draw attention to itself so you enjoy the stories it's happening on the other side you're going to have to make this decision for yourself you have to read different books and be like out do I care how much this is drawing attention to itself how much it's not it's really up to you let's save dialogue I see a few people who are like Oh Brandon it's the end of the semester we are so tired I'll tell my funny story and then we'll be done we'll do dialogue next time or one of the other times so I'm here in Utah going to a bookstore well exile a wit ight wit the dinner was what happened and my agent was in town my agent is a quirky man from New York he K is just delightful but he has like really New Yorker stuff about him right so he's a really fun guy very different from your experiences in Utah or in Nebraska I grew up you just don't meet a lot of people who are as as New York it's both my agent in my editor in a lot of ways and he also is the agent first Charlaine Harris right who writes the Tru Blood books so we go to dinner and there happens to be a Barnes & Noble next door right um and so my age is like hey you should go sign your books whenever you're near a Barnes & Noble go sign your book she's like really big on this right um he he thinks it's a travesty if you pass by a bookstore as an author and don't go sign your book so we went in to sign our books I went to the shelf and gathered my books and I had you know this is this is after I had kind of started to make it so I had a nice shelf of books and I brought him up to the front desk which I usually will do at a Barnes & Noble you know I won't just sign them and leave because they got autographed copy stickers and things like that's very nice then you know meet them place and there at the little rotunda little information desk was a very alternative culture woman okay we're talking you know piercings all over um you know dyed hair you know Pierce lip and tongue and all of this stuff very alternative and so I bring up my books and we start chatting as I'm Sam she's like oh fantasy I I really like the Twilight books and my agent ever being an agent you know his job is to sell the book steps and says have you read True Blood they're like Twilight but better and starts to go into the pitch and the woman stops him and says oh I can't read those those are pure filth and he was like no no it's because they're very r-rated okay they're very r-rated if you haven't read them and I mean they had a Showtime show or whatever and my agent just laughed and he said to me on the way out is like so this is what it's like to be in Utah right where even the most extreme liberal looking radical person is going to tell me that the books are morally impure and I shouldn't read I shouldn't be record those look something yeah yeah yeah that's you know she's that's very that's a very liberal opinion over here is that mean so anyway that's just kind of the contrast between his life and this one he was so shocked because Charlaine is I would say r-rated but not x-rated right there's way worse romantic fiction out there um and so he to him those are pretty tame and yet here pure filth and so just the contrast between a New Yorker and and Mormon dumb Sam there you are guys thank you guys for coming i yeah oh yay I'm happy to AK come talk to me if you got any questions two weeks left camera panakam allows you to find cameras and lenses like no other site find a nikon coolpix cameras with the highest base ISO or canon cameras with full-frame sensors find Sony e-mount zoom lenses ordered by aperture and just three clicks camera panakam shows you prices from up to thirty different sellers camera panakam striving to be the world's best camera and lens shopping site you

Channel: Camera Panda

Views: 182,624

Rating: 4.9473066 out of 5

Keywords: Brandon Sanderson, Earl Cahill, 318r, creative writing, fantasy, science fiction, camerapanda.com

Id: tI2UsHU4Htk

Length: 62min 21sec (3741 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 03 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Nefriver]

Ann McCaffrey. He's referring to the Dragonriders of Pern Series.

EDIT: Just rewinded the video a little. He mentions Ann McCaffrey at 19:42

EDIT EDIT: Just realized that the person you're referencing is actually mentioned way earlier (at 9:30). It is actually Dan Wells, a good friend of Sanderson.

[u/Acendiat]

He's right establish your characters and settig then begin to subvert and deconstruct them, later you have be sure not to keep subverting and also reconstruct things.