Brandon Sanderson - 318R - #5 (The Box)

i think we're going to start with the application from last week and then we're going to do our first lecture on um not the what you're writing but the how you're writing it part okay because you know stories are made up of two things one of them is not the chord to my microphone um they're made up of what you're writing and how you're doing it right so um but let's let's do some of this application from last week so that we can talk about this and kind of show you guys how this goes about and i'm let's talk about three basic stories and what we'll do together is we'll start brainstorming how to make it them a little more unique we'll look at some examples of these um in current films and books and things like that so the first one is the hero's journeys hero's journey um and we're just going to do a very simplified um example of the hero's journey right we've got um we've got um you've got a youngster in a boring life i say youngster usually it's um you know whatever but a teenager right some youth in a boring life um and then a mentor figure draws them on a quest and then um huge adversity and then back home that's like four simple beats of the hero's journey okay uh the other story we'll look at is the uh cinderella the rags to riches right so um in this one we have a person out of place being um uh being persecuted right right and then um they get uh unexpected even magical help may um prove themselves and then rule over those who persecuted him now these are not the only ways that you could tell these stories i'm just doing this for simplicity's sake i've been kind of hanging these beats and then the third one we will do is the um underdog sports right underdog sports you start with a um a a a loner outcast poor dog what's that or a dog right right right um a loner outcast who then um just has a special talent um and joins a gr joins a group to show it off boy i'm getting worse and worse at the right that says joins a group all right um the group is divided and fails and then through the loner becomes part of a team learns to be in the team and the team learns to work together and then they win the championship could you argue that's like a high story well the heist can be part you know it could be the way that you do this but um i want to look at kind of some archetypal examples of these in cinema or in books and then we'll start brainstorming how we can make one of these our own the whole idea is to take setting because last month was last week was setting to add new settings to these to make them distinctive and different through that you can take the sort of same framework now the thing i'm not going to do right now that i want you to do is take these and maybe a story of your uh one of your own you've noticed and ask yourself the why why do these stories work why does the person um being persecuted ruling over those who persecuted what kind of emotion is that creating in readers and why do they like that story why is the loner outcast um becoming part of a team and winning the championship what emotions does that give and how can you fulfill that in different ways uh the hero's journey um this is you know this one is about gaining experience in the world this one is about setting right what was wrong right the cinderella story is always you know she was supposed to be loved um in this family and she isn't and so that magical forces are coming and setting it right what was wrong so this is a restoring of a balance um and this one's kind of like the team dynamic it's i'm a loner i i don't have anything in my life but now i have this team um so hero's journey what what examples can you guys think of this in film or books that kind of follows this general format the hobbit yes hobbit um hobbit is like the one of the perfect examples right particularly the movie adaptations for uh for bilbo boring life mentor figure draws in my quest it's really hard and then i come back home right that is that i mean the book is called there and back again right um so yeah uh star wars so um the boring life is an interesting one to look at with this uh because normally in the hero's journey the hero is like some sort of farmer right what is luke he's a moisture farmer right he's still a farmer it's just spacey you know it's it's fantastical he farms moisture what does that mean we don't know who cares it's different um that that is a way that he's using setting when george lucas said hey i'm going to take this thing that is mostly be done as a classical quest i'm in sort of a you know a heroic quest and i'm going to make it a space western right um and that is merely transposing this this to a new genre a new setting but keeping the same core story any others you want to throw up on here that um that seems to fit for you harry potter harry potter yeah yeah harry potter's more this i would say um he's out of place and being persecuted he receives unexpected magical help and he eventually becomes a ruler um over those who who persecuted him um you can definitely say that any one of these you can be like no that's a hero's journey and it kind of is um i would put harry over here um um the matrix is a hero's journey um definitely harry potter has some elements any others you think you're thinking of aragon yeah lion king lion king lion king is definitely um straight up this thing and because lion king is you can probably guess that hamlet is since lion king is based on hamlet um so yeah um rags to riches other than harry potter and cinderella uh any other examples of this you guys can think of oliver twist it's a good one yep yep a lot of dickens a lot of um the early like horatio alger stories and that sort of thing the uh the american dream is this yeah slumdog millionaire yeah the what is that quote that people say it's like the american dream is partial is this because there are no poor people in america just embarrassed yet to be millionaires right um i can't remember what the exact quote is but it's the american dream is this idea that everybody is out of place and being persecuted until they have achieved their american dream i'm not saying that's true i'm just saying that's kind of what the gestalt is here yeah how about come on crystal um count of monte cristo yeah you could you could take this and say and go to revenge story um and once you take your say cinderella and the revenge story are the same thing then suddenly count of monte cristo and you know various tarantino films and things like that are all uh the same story as cinderella uh depending on how you look at it but once you can start transposing these one of the ones i thought of is dragonflight by anne mccaffrey one of my favorite uh fantasy science fiction books um is this sort of thing um underdog sports so uh what do we got for underdog sports stories uh yeah you could you could say that elantra's um i i would say that really way of kings is more um if you look at this format um um yeah that it's this uh anders game is one um what's that uh pitch perfect do you guys see pitch perfect did it hit all these points outcast special talent joins the group they're divided and failed the loner becomes the leader and then they win the championship hey um hoosiers is the classic example um miracle uh avengers uh you could say is it's this um wreck-it ralph yeah yeah uh yeah rugged ralph is really rags to riches more i think um ralph uh yeah um but the thing about these these kind of classic archetypes and again you can define them however you want you can come up with your own and say um or whatever what you should start to be able to do as a writer is look at a story and say why is the story that i love working can i boil it down to four or five bullet points that is the story and lift out the setting the setting doesn't matter right up here we have an epic fantasy we have several sports movies and we have a science fiction and they all hit the same points right the same beats um now something like way of kings we actually have like five different story lines um so specifically caledon's caledon story um is an underdog sports story but you you can you can you could take up and put up the heist if you wanted to as its own um again the difference between being a cook and a chef is the chef is able to say hey this wonderful thing that i ate what's in that can i boil it down to why it's tasty and then can i take that and make it my own um the application on this so let's ask hero's journey let's brainstorm a few um what boring thing could a protagonist be doing that makes their life dull and boring that they want to escape that isn't farming whether it's moisture or something like that math homework okay excuse me math homework dentistry okay a dentist yes olympic burgers yeah flipping burgers taxes okay you get this kind of idea where um let's do something that's in a different different genre okay not in our world pick a different genre um and and give me something boring and monotonous that someone could be doing yeah cleaning up after superhero oh i love that one yeah ditch digger in a magical world yeah yeah the ditch shaker in the magical world the ditch digger um all right they don't have to be a farmer stable manager stable manager okay okay go science fiction on him on me what's that custodian of the space station all right magical beastie a pest control it's like science fiction pest control oh wow i like that one isn't that an science fiction pest control think of all the cool pests you could come up with that this person's bored of but is really exciting this is a way that you could make the opening of a story really engaging despite the fact that the you know what you want to get across is this character is bored with their life it can still be exciting to us right they're like not another infestation of you know space worms that feed off of uh plasma beams right um and you kill them by overloading them by you know turning on all the plasma shots in the the whole room or something it's something cool like that um that they want to escape but seems cool to you um what's a different kind of mentor figure rather than a bearded wizard what about like a downloaded like chip from the father yeah yeah yeah an a a father's hologram like superman god the gandalf of dentists right i don't know what that is um that knows everything is that a book that knows everything there you go a know-it-all book okay the internet i've been sent on a quest by the internet what's that okay how can the little sister be the mentor figure they could be excited about this journey yeah yeah she could be possessed they could be a superstar sister uh or you know i could totally see a thing where the the brother gets sucked into her sister gets sucked into a fantasy world that the little sister came up with but it became real and so suddenly the little sister is the gandalf of this world um because only the five-year-old sister understands the rules every time i play with my children this is the way it is right right i'll be like playing along with my guy and they're like oh your guy can't do that because he doesn't have the magical power of this i'm like i did not know these rules wise mentor um i got to tell you the story just because it's funny um there was a time where i bought my son he was like four at the time i like all the little superhero figures little plastic ones because he loves superheroes and so he's playing with the superheroes i'm like he's like daddy come play with me um and this is out like in the front yard with his superheroes and he's got batman and i'm like all right i'll be superman you'd be batman we'll team up he looked at me he's like i'm going to be superman too right i'm like all right that makes sense you can be superman and batman i will be the flash and he's like i need to be the flash i'm like all right green lantern no one likes green lantern he's like oh but green's my favorite color um so i'm like who do i get to be and he looked at his four superheroes and he picked up a stick and he said you're stick man and i'm like okay what is stick man's powers like he throws sticks at people um so we had a nice superhero battle where we were fighting the bad guys and i guess cat to throw myself at the bad guys and it ever worked he's like oh that didn't work daddy he's impervious to sticks the only thing i got going for me son um all right huge adversity for the hero's journey what's some different huge adversities um other than going through the pits of mordor uh not mordor of whatever that dwarven city is where there's a balrog maurya where the sci-fi pest control guy his station gets overrun by pirates right right okay overrun by pirates for him okay so you could kind of turn this one into leslie i'm going to go it's a fulfillment that my knowledge of pest control is what defeats the pirates because i can control all these pests um you know you could turn into that sort of story i'm usually for the um for the hero's journey what you're gonna need to do is the adversity you're gonna have to cross the threshold if you really want to have this same type of story as the story of being separated from familiar and coming back to it so really it would be he gets kidnapped by pirates um right um if you want to tell this but you don't have to tell this story you could say okay this is a rags to riches that can take place in the same place um i'm going to use this different archetype he stays on it and the stuff that he knows how to do turns him into the station manager because suddenly it becomes at the end it's a zoo of all these fantastic obesities that people want to come see he's a millionaire because he's charging people because he knows how to use the you know the beasties right you could to turn it into that story very easily uh other interesting adversities yeah finds out the internet isn't always right internet isn't always right oh it's always right is wrong all right uh yeah you guys get this idea let's not stay on this one too much let's jump over to a rags to riches and don't just pick one of these points let's say can you can you come up with a different style of rags to riches story in a different genre that you could maybe be doing what different genres could you do this in as opposed to fairy tale we've got fairy tail up here most of these are kind of fairy tell-ish well well what do you got what's that a thriller okay how do you do a rag storage's thriller anyone got any ideas yeah uh born identity born identity born identity is definitely a good look at this um a lot of the john grisham books are this aren't they um maybe not the first one they got famous can't remember that is but like a lot of the later ones are you know the struggling lawyer person gets involved in some sort of thriller and at the end has figured out the problem walking dead walking dead okay there you go you could definitely say that tragedy king lear king lear okay rig riches to rags you flip it on his head right um or it's really just a tragedy in that he never gets this right um he never gets back to being in charge uh he gives it all up and finds out they'll hate him um except the one yeah anyway um the idea is that you should be able to learn how to kind of transpose these things to your story um this is not the only way to tell a story in fact you can ignore all of this on the board but a lot of people are saying you know how do i take these tools i'm learning and apply them well you could make a really cool underdog sports story where all you do is you say all right this is taking place in a fantasy world all right thanks and fantasy world what is an interesting um uh societal societal aspect that our main character doesn't participate in right meaning what is wrong with our character that makes them an outcast go ahead brainstorm something in a fantasy world what's something different that could be wrong about our character um wailing and they can't swim they can't swim they live in water world and they can't swim okay um while everyone else has good powers they have bad yeah or no powers that's uh the what was tracy hickman and margaret weiss wrote a story about that where everyone has a magical talent except the main character everyone's a trained assassin accepted whoa yeah nice yeah either that or a piggyback they're a pacifist right a society warriors um you know yeah everybody rides dragons but he's afraid of them he's afraid of dragon i don't i'm i don't have a dragon yeah he's a very victorian society but he hates that could be really tragic um if you really want to make one of these work what you're going to do is you're going to make them a loner um and their their power and their lonerism are not necessarily attached if you really look at a lot of the under export stores again you could build whatever you wanted don't take this as you have to but if you look at something like pitch perfect was the perfect example recently of this she's a loner because she's weird but she happens to sing real well which helps her click with this other group and they all happen to be good at clever dialogue somehow um and so you know you look for something i'm alone i've always been a loner in my life and they're gonna find something in this ender is a loner because there's a third child right in a world where third children are forbidden he's a third child he's he's an outcast he's also mormon which is kind of weird too but they don't make a big deal of that um what's that yeah he's half catholic half mormon which is extra weird um but he has a special talent right um and his special talent is um is destroying people um well caring that he's destroyed people right that's ender's thing is he's a compassionate killer um and so he joins a group of like-minded individuals um the group is divided they're not good but um he is able to make it work one of the big things of the indirect sports story is usually there's some weird external pressure they're like oh you're doing well here is you know us a curveball to make it much harder for you um you know another big thing is the oh we failed we're out of the tournament that almost happens every time oh we failed we got third place and the only sec the first two places go on oh the second place is disqualified and we move on like that happens a ton um but you kind of have to say why does that happen a ton what's the point well it gives us a nice really low moment that we can recover from right you can see them working really hard fail anyway but then providence allows them to continue to prove themselves one last time um you you look at these things and yeah our loaner has a different type of loaner as a loaner for the reason what is their skill you can create a fantasy skill that is very different if one of your planning your story like i want to tell a story about someone who has a really cool magical talent maybe this framework will help you divine the story that you want to tell and that's the important thing to keep in mind don't let one of these stories make you say oh i can't tell the story i want to tell only use these stories or these frameworks if you look at this and say hey that's the story i was wanting to tell all along this framework can help me understand the beats that other people have used in this type of story before so that i can try them out and see if they fit in my story to make it better okay um let's move on but first though any questions on this before we go on to kind of more prose level stuff okay so let's talk about the box i'm actually going to draw it well this time because last week it was really embarrassing but i can't draw three circles in a square all right so your story is plot set in character tied together by conflict the box is how you see this um i i really like how george orwell talked about this i usually use a lot of his philosophy his philosophy on writing was was instrumental in me becoming the writer that i am um and he talks about the prose as being a pane of glass through which you see the story right uh that's why i kind of like this box metaphor that you this box is going to color everything that the reader uses to see the story that's going on and you have a ton of control by using this box over how your reader is going to experience the story there are no right answers and this is what really annoys me about some of the writing courses that i took actually byu was really good in this aspect they didn't try this too much but once in a while you'd run across a professor who would say um you can't use the box you want to use and you can't use the setting you want to use because those aren't valid settings or boxes your story needs to be this um i think that's the worst thing that a teacher of writing can do what a teacher of writing can can do is say i'm really good at this one style of box and i will teach you my method and you can learn to adapt that to your stories and hopefully it'll make you better right it's okay for professors to be specialized and say look i i write literary fiction this is what i'm good at and what i understand and you can learn a lot from those professors but you should always write what you want to write and you should let what they're telling you inform the type of story that you're writing and see what you can learn from it um i'm going to talk about a lot of things other than literary writing versus non-literary writing because that's so hard to define what is literary what is not um there's this sort of sense that we have literary writing and genre fiction in the writing world and no one can put a finger on what that is right you look at somebody like ursula le guin and they're like what is this well it's literary genre fiction but what does literary mean usually when people say literary what they mean is that the box is really pretty okay often that's what they mean um that the way that they've designed that box is that if you that the the mere act of experiencing the box is so much fun that the readers of it are really excited by it that's not always what they mean though they also might mean really quote unquote experimental with um with voice viewpoint intense but again not always and the truth is there's it's really hard to you know be truly experimental because everyone's tried everything else else out and so sometimes it just means we're using a very hard version of you point intense we're doing you know uh second person future tense which is really hard to make work i have read books where it works um it's actually the the fifth season by nk jamison which is a fantasy novel is um one of the the sequences is i believe um second person future tense and it works perfectly because it's like a person who has lost their memory you think at the beginning who's being told by themselves what they're going to do in the story and so they're telling the story to themselves and it's beautiful it's got really great prose and it works really well but it's literary because it's using one of these kind of really difficult things to write um quote unquote literary right i want you to know what the tools are and what they do and then decide what the best ones are for your story we're going to start by talking about viewpoint intents because this is one of the most fundamental choices you will make regarding the box and it changes your story in interesting ways the first one we're going to talk about is the viewpoint meaning first person second person third person and there there are really um this one basically doesn't exist um and then there's actually two of these which are kind of big so it's kind of like um right the children of israel where like you know if manasseh are kind of like almost counted as their own tribes but it's like this it's really the three are first person and the third omniscient and third limited they're not first second and third but let's talk about them um first person what is first person yes i am the story i am doing these things there is a present narrator telling the story to you right um so second person would be you did this you go this the the only genre that this has been common in is um choose your own adventures right um though you will find literary fiction that does weird things with this sometimes uh to experiment with second person if you you you quickly want to look literary you can go ahead and do second person most literary people will still laugh at you because it's that same sort of thing that like it's like film student type stuff right where it's like everyone who thinks they're being edgy in film school is actually being edgy in the exact same way that everyone else is being edgy i mean most of the time if you try this you're just going to look like that but once in a while it really shines so yeah doesn't it also get marked as passive voice especially if you switch views so like if you're in first person then switch that's not passive passive is um refers to whether it's subject object um and verb passive voices instead of i hit the baseball across the wall or you hit the baseball across the wall or he hit the baseball across the wall that's first second third passive is the baseball was hit across the wall it removes the subject so it's passive which means the object seems to be doing the action whereas you want the reader's focus to be on the character if the baseball is the main character then the baseball was hit across the wall is actually the right way to write that if it is a sapient baseball that is telling you a story right um but in that case you would want to say i was hit across the wall right um so the passive voice is bad because it confuses the reader because usually they're like wait a minute who's doing what and it distracts the reader one of the big things you can do on a prose level this is an aside from this um is you can understand that the reader's attention will follow the character's attention okay really useful for clarity reasons what this means is um that let's see if i can construct one really quickly um the door the door slam i'm not gonna ride up here it'll take you long so you you're right in the store you're like the door slammed open t the t rattled on the table um the people next to me screamed um i got really scared uh and then you go on for a while then you finally say it was my father standing in the doorway who i thought was dead the problem with that scene is the reader the characters actually focused on the father not on the t not on this um the character immediately noticed it was the father and so the way you'll generally write that scene as a new writer will make the reader be like yeah but who's in the doorway which once in a while as an author you would want to withhold that information for various reasons but the new writer is not doing that they're just like i have to describe the scene properly and so you're like the carrot reader's attention's on the uh the teapot or the reader's attention's on this or the person screaming next door and while the character is focused on holy cow my dad's alive right this is what you want to avoid you want the character's attention to direct where the reader's attention goes it's hard for me to give examples i'll try and watch for them in some of the student submissions um and and pop them out if you guys uh if they'll let me show them to you um it's just one of these things there's so many things about the box that you will practice your whole life to do better okay and you will be able to pick up any well-received popular novel and find places where you're like you know what they probably could have made the box better right here any given book you can do that you'll find examples where they're telling instead of showing where they're not directing the reader's attention properly where they're using the passive voice these things are things that you will have to just practice your entire life to get better at and it's part of what you try to do in revision is to stamp out passive voice to direct the reader's attention to make sure that your your sounds are right you look like you've got a hand up or is that just nope you're just laying your hand down okay that's fine but let's go back to these um so first person second person uh third person splits into two major forms omniscient unlimited omniscient uh is an all-knowing narrator telling you a story but without ever having a present form um limited is you are showing the world through the eyes of one character at a time i would say that um these days this and various incarnations of first because there's a lot of different permutations of it are your two main tools and if you don't know what else to write you should pick one of those two and go with it omniscient you still do see once in a while and it can work really well there's nothing wrong with um with omniscient if you do it right uh the one i usually point out to people that is in my opinion in science fiction fantasy the greatest omniscient book of all time is dune and why dune works is dune will show you the thoughts of every character and scene at a given time you'll just be jumping from paragraph to paragraph into different heads what this does is and part of the reason why omniscient is hard is if you ever don't show someone's viewpoint in omniscient it can sort of feel very fake and why herbert makes it work in dune is he says you know like when the traitor walks on the screen in whatever chapter he comes in like one of his first thoughts is well i sure am sad i have to betray all these people right that's how omniscient works it's not that exactly but you know um he you know very early on who the traitor is the tension is is the the tension of knowing something terrible is going to happen versus wondering what's going to happen wondering what's going to happen is much easier to foster in a reader than how i'm so worried that this is going to take place what effect is it going to have on my characters but those are the basic forms and i want to dig into each of them a little bit more and we will start with first person nya right now first person is the default you will find plenty of third person limited as well the occasional ambition but the default is first person um why um what are the advantages of first person if you as a reader uh when any chef tour sort of stuff what advantage do you see it just puts you right in the mirror yeah it's immediately immersive it's immediately immersive with the focus on focus on character right you just nail that character go ahead it's easier to have a very engaging voice yes voice is very natural voice in fact that's like the prime key for why first person works when it does go ahead it's a lot easier to hear readers to sympathize and prepare yeah building sympathy is easy any other ideas it's a lot easier to have an untrustworthy narrator some books books work because you know the the um person telling you the story is somewhat untrustworthy and that's fun uh name of the wind is a great example of this is one of the more recent popular first person epic fantasies um the voice all of these things are key to why name of the wind works as well as it does you've got a guy who is a poet telling the story he has an excuse to wax poetic the voice is really strong in the character it builds a lot of sympathy for him even though he's not a very good person right that's like a key of why this works if you actually read those books if you if you haven't read them it's about this guy who's kind of an arrogant jerk he's sympathetic in some ways he's very capable um but he always sabotages his own every success he gets he ends up sabotaging because he's too arrogant in some way um it's a classic greek tragedy in that regard a lot of the greek tragedies are like this as well look how competent this character is oh their tragic flaw just undermined every victory they had that would be a very easy book for you to hate the main character because i mean i'm sure you've seen films where you're like i hate this person um and things like this but because it's in this first person voice he can present himself very sympathetically even while you know he's probably lying to you and it makes the book work so you can have this kind of classic tragedy with a classic flawed hero um and have the reader still enjoy reading about them anything else do you guys like about a first person yeah um it also addresses the audience yeah like the moment you focus on character that character yeah yeah you can you can address audience which is it which is a great advantage um like there's this sense that uh the hobbit is written for frodo they really play this up in like the movie right um where by having a set audience that you understand while reading it not all first person do this but you can it's a tool you can use with first person that is really hard to get across in the other ones which then creates another layer another level of interest now i want to talk about the various types of first person because there are a couple different types you should be aware of the basic one is i am telling you telling um i should i should do this on a separate board we'll come back to third lim limited and um so we're going to go over here to our types of first person sorry to jump around on the board um but there's this like um um you know character tells their story right um and then this is kind of what you think of your classic first person where it's like they're writing their memoir right um but there's a few things you expect in this one is it's way too detailed to actually be a memoir but we let them get away with that just an aspect of the genre it's almost like you imagine they start telling the story and then you transition into an actual story with their flourishes on it name of the wind is a good example if you actually listen to how long it takes a reader to read name of the wind which you can get from audible it's like you know you listen to it across the course of four days well it's supposed to be one day in world yeah it's got way too much detail for someone to actually tell their story but it's a it's an aspect of the genre that we just accept uh the assassin's apprentice stories the um fits and the fool books by by robin hobb which are fantastic if you guys are looking for a good first person epic fantasy she does a great job of it um these those are kind of the same it's like yes the characters tell writing their memoir but we get the expanded version as if they had perfect recollection of that memoir okay um there is what we call epistolary i don't even know how to write pistol area epistolary epistolary is where you are collect your story is a collection of um written notes from characters in world dracula is one of the great examples of this if you've read dracula it's all done through journal entries and things like that but um illuminae which came out last year in the ya world is a perfect example as well which you're seeing a lot of new media versions of this episode is really hot right now it's um text messages and blog posts and forum posts and illuminae's a lot of um like government reports that are redacted which is what the fun of the book is you like pick it up and it's got black lines all over the place and you feel like you're reading something of all these this character these characters like journal entries and things like that that's been taken by a government agency put together and then presented this is the found footage of books right or really found footage is the film version of what books have been doing for many years um you someone may have collected these but you came along and you found this footage these these written stories and there's rarely ever any actual like prose that's not uh related in some way as part of the in-world ephemera ephemera is a word we use for something like a piece of art or writing that's actually in from in world okay um so epistolary um is letters it's called epistolary because um epistles like sorcery and cecilia is a good example of this where it's like letters between two characters tells you the story um but nowadays it's tweets um and then we've got this kind of cinematic first person which is what you see a lot of ya doing today which is there's no direct audience it's not really like name of the wind you actually have a frame story where you see the character sit down and say i'm going to tell you my story now but any book that kind of starts off i'm going to tell you my story now or i remember when and things like this what these kind of cinematic um yas do this day these days it's as if the character's never writing this down it's as if you're in their head right and everything is a um a kind of in character thought bubble for the whole book and they're describing their own actions but it's never it's it's like the opposite of epistolary it's never you never really assume it was written down uh you guys can probably think of some of these i always forget what's in first person and what's not is hunger games first person yeah um uglies was first person too right um what's that wasn't it no what's that divergent yeah diversion is another good example um this has gotten really popular right now um it's kind of like there's a chip in their head and that's recording the story for you as they as they go through their story um so am i missing any you guys know of any like first person that isn't one of these three things um i suppose there's the the the the kind of hybrid uh third person on and and then omniscient where you have like gandalf tells the story it's not really gandalf but um there is somebody who says i'm going to tell you the story of this right um the hobbit is actually this but it's bilbo telling his own story and referring to himself in the third person is what tolkien said it was um but you can kind of it's almost omniscient so it's really what this is is omniscient that has a first person narrator who's the omniscient narrator to you does that make sense anyone confused whether that one's kind of weird been forever since i read it uh yes i think a lot of classic uh there's a lot of classic books that are this and uh yeah i think great gatsby is the let me tell you the story of um you know like a lot of the classic um even a lot of classic cinema kind of had this well let me tell you the story of this person i have not read the book thief i know i know but the old robin hood movie from the disney uh is this right there's an actual who's telling a story it's not the main character but he's omniscient and he's telling you the story of robin hood what's that the rooster's name salad uh yeah yeah yeah the rooster yeah allen and dale yeah a tv show that i think does at gilligan's island because it starts off with sit back and i'll tell you zip back and i'll tell you dale yeah that sort of thing there you go so you guys got this you got that so um let's talk about these three what why you would want to pick one over the other why would you want to pick uh the characters telling you their story what advantages and disadvantages does it have so uh a very interesting example i've seen that kind of undercuts often if the character is telling you their story you you kind of learned oh they've made it through yes they've survived an interesting uh subversion i've seen on this is a very crass book named uh john dies at the end yeah john dies down by the guy who did cracked right the website yeah i haven't read it um but i have no people who liked it uh i believe that the sorry go ahead i was gonna say it's a very interesting it's a very interesting way to do the characters sitting down right tell you i'm going to tell you my story or the story of and kind of shattering your expectations right isn't wasn't there a peter jackson film that was based on a book that was the same way where it's like a first person narrative where you don't realize the main character is a ghost with the yeah lovely bones right main character dies in that right right yeah um so there are subversions to what's that spoiler yeah i'm sorry you're still yeah i mean yeah that's actually that's that's in the first chapter that's the first chapter okay good so it's not that much of a spoiler it's a first person story from first person ghost story but um so let's um let's say that generally characters tell their story you are right that it removes a little bit removes tension um that is one of the big drawbacks of this style of first person in that you generally know that they live and the actually they're a ghost once in a while you can get away with that but it's not surprising anymore because enough people have done it um it still can be a cool arc thing to construct but um so it removes that's part of the reason why i think the ya ones all went to the cinematic because there's this sort of feeling that no they're not actually telling your story you're living it with them and most of these will be in first person present tense so that you get so it kind of removes this but that is one disadvantage of this but it's also kind of an advantage right um name of the wind works because the opening scene well the opening sequence you find this person who is this awesome dude um and everyone knew knows was this awesome dude and he's an innkeeper and he like hates his life you're like oh this is a tragedy right i'm going to read about how this guy's rise and fall that's what this story is it sets up the expectations for you and what it does is it gives you that that promise of tone right where i think a lot of people would probably hate the ending of the king killer which i haven't read yet um none of us have but we all pretty much know it's going to be a big tragedy if you don't set that up ahead of time and say this is a tragedy that it could be one of those endings everyone hates but since now you're kind of waiting to see how he fails it's exciting and so um but you know you also know that he lives it doesn't matter that he lives because you're waiting to see how he fails and so you can play with this idea in really interesting ways could you argue that this sets up a sense of scale and epicness in your world like defending it really depends uh generally third person limited is your best bet for epic because it's best at showing a bunch of different viewpoints and i would say this is a limitation of all first persons except epistolary um it's the one that tries to mitigate this is the more viewpoints you have in a first person story the more confusing it gets for the reader since you're attaching to i the persona of i remembering which i it is can get really complicated now that you can do two or three no problem really is not a trouble at all there are lots of great uh why a first-person books that are two main protagonists each with an eye but if you have a if you had a cast of 60 like some epic fantasies do wheel of time there were 2 000 named characters and how many viewpoint characters are like 50 main viewpoint characters if each of those were i um there's something in your brain that's going to make it much harder to process which eye am i in right now and who are they that reminding them every every third sentence what the character's name is helps you with that so um first person tends to be really good at immersing you in one or two characters with a strong voice and tends to be bad and immersing you in an entire world full of people that's just kind of that doesn't mean you can't do it i'm just saying these are the natural drawbacks of the uh the things um first person um character telling their story does have the advantage and disadvantage that you need to create two versions of your main character all right this can be a liability or an advantage if you're writing writing a ya book and the i that's telling the story is in their 60s and the greeter spends part of their time attaching to a 60 year old and part of their time attaching to the teen you can send a mixed message or you can show the difference between them and the contrast those are both like i said that's not a right or wrong you just have to be aware of this one of the reasons why the why i think have moved to cinematic is they're like no i want to hit this teen character and have a sympathy for the teen character and in this one and the one that's like the first person omniscient um hybrid you've got somebody in between you and the action good thing or bad thing depending on how you write your story okay uh epistolary the big advantage of it is um it's much easier to tell a large cast of characters because generally there are short scenes um and you list who they are at the beginning it's like journal entry from this person at such and such time and then it's like three pages rather than a huge chapter um so it mitigates some of that that issue but at the same time epistolary tends to be much harder to attach with the characters through epistler is more like look at this fun format all of the fun like the box this is the one of all of these that the box is the most visible right where you get to have fun with the form of telling this story dracula is a great example of this illuminae yeah the martian yeah the martians hybrid i mean you can hybridize any of these martian is um is first person epistolary whenever you're from um mark watney thanks i was gonna say marky mark but it's not actually marky mark um but whenever you're from mark's viewpoint i believe it's epistolary every time in the book but whenever you're from someone else's viewpoint it's third person limited from their viewpoint so you get kind of this here is our strong character no one else has a voice to rival his but that's okay because they're all uh like you know addendums to his story in some ways to fill you in so he he did a great job with that book i really like the martian um so area yeah um generally epistolary it's going to be a little more detached because it's not happening immediately you know it's not but you can do just really fun things with the form and have a blast with it it's also a way to get around the is my main character going to live or die because you could always just have the note at the end say this was you know it's found footage right the whole gimmick of found footage is we don't know if they we just found this we don't know what happened to them um and so you can you can you can mitigate that problem uh the first person cinematic we've talked about a lot i've kind of outlined what its advantages are um the big advantages being that it's the most immediate of them and the best at just getting into this one or two characters and using the first person voice is the method of doing that okay questions on first person okay second person don't do it third person no um second person um i've seen it done well so infrequently but the truth is nobody really wants to do it so it's okay uh if you have a really compelling reason why you want to do second then go for it right but it should add something to your story and it shouldn't just be a gimmick and that's really hard to do like i said the story where you get the sense that somebody telling themselves their story because they've forgotten it was a really cool um aspect of this story and i'm not going to spoil that story for you that you start reading it and you get this sense that's one way that i've seen it done well if you aren't like i am about having a cool box i'm about having four cool circles inside the box then just skip this one okay and that's really all i'm gonna say on it any any questions on it yeah uh you know if you go write some some choose your adventure books then yay go for it uh let's talk about third versus limited so third person limited is the default form for almost all fiction that is not told in the first person uh an epic fantasy it is the default in um almost all thrillers i've read they're either one of these two everything is going to default to limited or first person um and so if there's one thing that you can do to improve your fiction and get get published it is learn to either do the the third person limited or the first person really well and i often say that the grand skill of being a fantasy novelist is or science fiction novelist is learning how to do a viewpoint in limited or in first whichever one you pick that expresses character plot and setting without ever telling you the character the plot or the setting right you you know that this character you know that mark watney is a snarky pop culture fanatic genius um who kind of has uh a mouth on it right you know that from line one which i can't repeat at byu okay um you know you know like you it takes you one paragraph to know this person's entire character their plot and where they are i mean he never says well i'm on mars you know he might say i was part of the mars mission that went wrong but you see what i'm saying the grand skill is to convey information to the reader in a way that is fun and not boring and we will spend an entire session on how to do this okay so the second box session will be talking about how to not info dump but third person limited basically what third person limited is is you pick a character's viewpoint for a given scene you do not show the thoughts of anyone else during that scene unless they you know express them and you don't see anything that the character whose head you're in does not notice and you show it to them when they notice it so if um earl came in to see at me and i was writing on the board and i'm you're in my viewpoint you say he heard the door slam and footsteps and he turned around you don't say earl came in this is because you want to cement us in the character's head as best that you can and this allows you to kind of steal a little bit not quite as much but a little bit of the first person's focus on character for your third person limited yeah if you're uh if your story has like mystery yeah themes were like trying to drop hints about other characters in their behavior yeah how do you do that when the main character isn't specifically noticing them okay do you guys all hear that um so couple of ways to convey information to the reader and not the character one is the big advantage of third person limited is that you can show a viewpoint from someone else's um head at any time and give the reader information that the character doesn't have very hard to do in first person and in third person you'll be like anytime you're seeing a movie or a book cut to the to the villains they're now in you know third person limited not really it could be omniscient but you see what i'm saying so if you want to drop these clues you have another character notice it or harder but still possible you establish that the character has a blind spot and you have the charac the other character say something that the viewpoint character completely misses but that the reader notices this is hard and dangerous because they're going to start to feel that your main character is an idiot if they don't notice what the reader is noticing but if you've managed to establish this as a limitation of the character really well then they'll instead say they're an idiot i hope they get over this not they're an idiot i want to put the book down okay and those are two different things you can have the reader be like wow this character is totally an idiot um but the other way is to slip it in so subtly that even the reader doesn't notice and then have someone else point it out later um the kind of the sixth sense philosophy right um so yeah my my answer to you is that's really hard to do without doing another viewpoint so limited it's advantages you can have lots of viewpoints it's still good with carrot with a character um it is much harder to have um a an untrustworthy you can still do it matt coffin from the wheel of time is an untrustworthy third person limited narrator he will say things in his head that are in direct contrast to what's happening on the screen and in direct contrast to how you know he feels um it's really hard to do but that's part of what makes that character work so if you want to see a character that does that late matt cawthon is really good at that um matt cawthon in like books nine and ten is is really good at that yeah what so when you do have a revolving cast yes the limited perspective does this mean that you would have the same narration for every single character no good question good question so so there's a couple answer that can you switch narrators so in third limited you want every viewpoint to feel distinct the every viewpoint should feel the same in fact that's when you know you are doing third person limited right is when a reader would be able to know what character's head you're in from a few sample paragraphs from that viewpoint without mentioning their name you want to borrow some of the first person voice stuff now the advantage and kind of disadvantage at the same time is that viewpoint distinction does not have to be 100 accurate characters can be a little more you know the narrative can be a little more clever than the character is or can be a little more flowery than the character would be and the reader's going to accept that and so if you read a robert jordan jordan book all the descriptions are a little bit flowery he likes descriptions that are flowery but if you're in the head of the character from the um from the place where there's no water from the desert and she's describing a bottle of water she'd be like i need to you know that bottle of water how can they just leave it sitting out like that someone's going to steal it whereas the other character looks at the bottle of water and it's like only water where's my where's my you know where's my wine where's my drink and those two characters describe this same thing in opposite ways despite the fact that their descriptions might be more flowery than they would actually do them if they spoke them okay so the it kind of does this sort of balancing act that's my balancing act tight rope between an omniscient and a first when it comes to descriptions you can have a voice that has some similarities across viewpoints but you want to still be distinct does that answer your question yeah and that's the fun of writing third limited um you should make your writing in third limited so that the lens through which you see the world is directly colored by this character's experience okay omniscient on the other hand usually has some sort of either present narrator which is our hybrid we've already discussed or what omniscient does it says our narrative our narrative all has the same voice narrative is all our descriptions everything's not inside someone's head and we're going to punctuate it with the distinctive thoughts from all the characters so it kind of has the smoothing effect where you have one consistent voice for everything except for the thought bubbles of the characters which are all in their their own head and you get the sense even when that there's not a present narrator that there's a storyteller telling you this story and the only things that break that viewpoint are the thought bubbles so it's kind of like the comic book narrative it's the comic book narrator um and they can be as present or or not if you want they can be someone who's like you know i am the narrator and you can do things like he little did he know if you ever say little did he know that's omniscient and you should try to cut that out of your limited okay but little did he know that across the world this was happening that is all omniscient it's kind of more like inserting the narrator who's saying stuff to you or you can just leave the narrator out dune doesn't have one um but a lot of the third person omniscients do have one the you know the the voice or the formless narrator who's telling you the story that knows everything and is going to lead you along the the path of this story yeah so with third person limited yes the character who is of he's in a secret identity yes and his true identity is a big spoiler that i'm saying yes how can i do okay you um have to cheat okay and whether your reader will help let you do this or not um depends on your writing skill the way to do this in a first person a third person limited is to say um i can't reveal my i can't focus on my secret right now it's too much pain for me to think about you have to hit what we call hang a lantern on it you have to say to the reader i am keeping this information from you because of the because this character has a good reason for not thinking about it right now and the longer you do that the more the reader's gonna get annoyed at you okay and so do it very carefully um or write it in first person from his viewpoints because the fir because readers are fine with uh the first person narrator if the first person narrator withholds information they're a jerk if the third person narrator holds withholds information you're a jerk does that make sense and you can be a jerk sometimes i miss born i withheld kelsier's um big plan um i had to be really careful with that one but again it is it is one of those things that in a first person everyone would have bought and in the third person once in a while someone's like ah you cheated and the writers will know that you're cheating when you're doing it sometimes cheating is the right thing okay very quickly let me talk about tense and then if you have questions write them down on your slip and i will address them at the beginning of next week because we only have a few minutes left tense basically you will have to choose between past tense and present tense don't use future tense unless you decide that you're going to do something goofy um and it goes really well with like your second person weirdness right um basically you're going to settle on she did this or she does this and then stay consistent through the whole book the truth is looking at actually how readers read the two are very very similar and by about two or three chapters in the reader has forgotten which one it is there is present tense is a little more immediate but also a little more annoying um because it's immediate but there's a little thing in the reader says head that says no you're not doing that right now i'm reading the book so it has to have happened before um but that is such a small thing that you can just pick your favorite one and do it and and it will not adversely affect how your book gets published in most mainstream adult fiction past is the um is the standard and most mainstream y a present tense is the standard um you can do whatever you want okay so write down your questions and i will get to them at the beginning of next time otherwise thank you guys very much and have a good week camerapanda.com allows you to find cameras and lenses like no other site find the nikon coolpix cameras with a high space iso or canon cameras with full frame sensors find sony e-mount zoom lenses ordered by aperture in just three clicks camerapanda.com shows you prices from up to 30 different sellers camerapanda.com striving to be the world's best camera and lens shopping site

Channel: Camera Panda

Views: 200,351

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

Id: -jRmxWlrVVg

Length: 67min 49sec (4069 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 18 2016