Sanderson 2012.1 - Ideas & Outlining

right let's talk about right being a writer as far as classic concern it's not about the things perhaps you think being writers about alright we're going to talk about three quick lessons today and hopefully these will become the themes of this class for you all right number one okay I want to disabuse you of a few notions writing is not about inspiration all right right it's not about inspiration okay we'll get into this more writing it's not about ideas actually does write is not about ideas we will talk about that writing more specifically getting published it is not about luck okay what is writing about this writing is about skill and today I want to try and prove this to you okay let's talk let's use some metaphors we're writers right this is the kind of stuff we do how many of you when someone sits down to play piano for you how quickly can you tell if they're a good pianist or not thirty five notes three to five okay um basically everybody in this room can judge a pianist level of skill within a minute or two a play not exactly but you can note if this is someone who's good at the piano or this is someone who's still an amateur of the piano you can probably tell if this is a master versus just someone who's pretty good okay editors published writers people who know what they're doing can do the same thing with one page of your writing in the exact same way that is why it's not about inspiration ideas or luck because in one page I can judge how good a writer you are okay people wonder why can editors reject manuscripts or in this new age where we are sometimes bypassing you know there's how comes readers just put something down after one page when they haven't given it a real shot you guys can judge this too you've read it read it read enough you know enough you can judge if something is going to work from you for you pretty quickly perhaps not as quickly as most editors can but you'll know you'll read a chapter and you'll know whether that if that person is a master if they're in that medium grade where they've got some good things going on it's still readable but they're obviously not a master or if this is someone's first novel they wrote when they were 12 you can tell all these things so how do you develop this still practice hey somebody knows what they're doing the reason I say it's not about inspiration inspiration and ideas and luck are all important but it's not about those things the reason I say this is let's say the decision under metaphor you are world star batter on a baseball team when you step up to the plate to hit that ball and you connect is it inspiration ideas or luck ideas are the wrong metaphor here but is it luck it's still you have done that so many times that when you step up to swing you know exactly what to do start you guys are in the spray range I'm just warning you you're also kind of in the wacky range this is kind of tight quarters so I'll apologize ahead but it's not for the for the up for the hitter for the baseball player it's not a matter of luck when they connect okay it's a matter of habit of having spent thousands of hours practicing how to do that and one thing that I want to encourage in you is to start looking at writing transfer as a little bit more of a performance-art yeah okay when you sit down to write all of that skill comes into bear and if you have practiced enough your mind will think about the problems that are that you're trying to work on the page it will figure out how to bring out the characters it will figure out how to create a plot that is really engaging it will do this all in interesting ways because it's just natural to you the same way that the pianist sitting down to play that piece doesn't think about it how it goes we'll talk a lot in this class about the behind the scenes we'll break it down well say here's what writers are doing the tricks to remember is ah almost none of the time that's a really awkward way to say that most of the time we are not sitting there conscious neatly and thinking I need to follow Brandon's first law of MAGIX or I need to build a plush ride fail cycle for this character we're not thinking that any more than the baseball player is thinking all right I bring my bat down at this trajectory this exact force in order to they they they don't think that I'm perhaps they have thought that on occasion but they're not thinking it at that moment so keep that in mind as we talk about how to write books in this class I will focus on novel writing why because that's how that's what I'm good at doing I'm mediocre at short stories I'll be upfront with you about that I'm okay at novellas by you get to fifteen or twenty thousand words I start to do okay I'm terrible at five thousand words I will try to bring in someone who can talk to you about short stories they tell you more about them if I can the other reason I talk primarily about novels is I'm willing to bet that almost everyone in this room reads novels but the very few of you read a lot of short stories let's just do a race man see anyone here subscribe for short story magazine all right so we've got to yeah what do you subscribe to well it is leaving it okay that leading edge um pod Castle okay yeah okay so since some of the podcast ones that some of the online ones are really fun daily SF and things like that but it's telling that nobody in this room subscribes to azimoff's analog or F and SF with three big science fiction fantasy magazines because young people don't demographically if we were doing this 30 years ago of good half to 60 percent of the room would belong to who would subscribe to one these magazines most of you don't read a lot of short fiction so you really shouldn't be writing a lot of short short fiction one of the primary questions we get us a writer and I guess a writer is should I start with short fiction because once upon a time with all the short fiction markets that are out there starting with short fiction was the good way to break in it no longer is it's still a good way if you're good at it but if you there's such different art forms if you spend all your client practicing with the short story and never with the novel and yet the novel is what you want to be doing you're doing yourself a bit of this abyss service plus with the direct publishing methods we have nowadays where you can just directly reach an audience there's no reason not to be writing novels if novels and what you read and novels what you want to I want to write so we will talk about novels if you really want to do short stories and will allow you for the class to write a short story collection instead of a novel as you're 50 but that's only if you are actually serious about it and you like one of these fellows who was actually reading short stories quite a bit I would I would count if you bought any of the world's best anthologies or something like that the rest you should be ready cause you can take your genre there are a wide number of things you could do I won't even force you to write science fiction fans because I always hated it when my professor said you can't write science fiction fantasy so I just wrote in anyway said and dared them to fail me and they never did hey do you know I know you want to so I won't make you but I strongly suggest that sounds a good third of our time in the lectures we'll be talking about science fiction fantasy elements um you you can write you can write children's that includes middle grade in Hawaii I hope you're not writing picture books or chapter books because I have no idea how to help you if you are you should really be taking her at wellness class instead but I'm going to assume that you are already at least the middle grade novel middle grade is some targeted nine to 12 year olds you know Harry Potter started the middle grade or why a or science fiction or fantasy for adults Speedwell counts in that urban fantasy counts in that teen paranormal romance sure if you want to [Music] whatever it is you want to do all right because the fundamentals will be pretty much the same regardless of which of those you're doing you know our core military a staff or whatnot and I would let you guys what you want ideas one thing to get through your head is that ideas are usually cheap boy those don't race your Lal try using these guys in the deuce a try race it don't say perfect don't put it on anything so I should be a pair of it one thing to get over is the idea that I did a great ideas make a great ball well a certain quality of idea is important however a great writer can take the most basic ideas and make a brilliant novel out of it and a terrible writer will take the best ideas in the world and will turn them into something terrible okay once in a while there's an idea like onion I always I usually refer to Jurassic Park before most I guess I wish I had you know for a bad guy to sort of make a big mark out that is a really great story seat and some are better than others but the thing to teach you is ideas should be cheap you shouldn't have to worry about your ideas you should not coddle your ideas and treat them as sacrosanct you shouldn't think I have this one novel I've been working on for so long and it's the perfect book and I need to just get it done and then everything will be great instead you should be thinking boy that book that I've been working on for ten years then I started that as my baby is such a big millstone hung around me I should pass that aside and start fresh with something new write it for a few months and teach myself to write and then once I know how to write then maybe I can do justice to that magnificent idea that I've been working on for ten years that now it's just turning out to be you know I've been churning working on it for so long that I've even forgotten how many drafts I've done you know this was in one draft and this other thing was another draft I forget that I've taken this out it gets to be a big mess so for this class you will have to cast aside anything you've been working on before unless you come and get specific paid permission from me someone who has a book contract as permission you know to work on whatever bill contract for I just you up nation on yeah but for the most part you should be taking everything anything you've written on the board you can take something you've got ideas for you plan but anything you've written on before you should pass the side and start fresh from the beginning for this class yeah you're fine you're fine you know you go to the spirit of law what are we doing you're putting some friends oh sure put my front in front of me make it easy for people to listen you're gonna get without my for me all right yeah I'm eventually gonna then they feel all cool and techy and stuff like that and so yeah sorry people listening online who might actually verify we're trying something new this year apparently we can actually release this online if we want to so we're going to and these make a master's degree a bachelor's degree maybe something your honors something okay okay by the way eyes on the side I think we've got like five PhD students in my class who are the PhD students I've looked into there are people maybe just list PhD if your own on the thing if you've got like too many credits or something oh it's sat on my class role okay you've got you boy wanted once then Oh JD pay an attorney it's always good to know more attorneys like I said a few of your like Mary's or something like that ER yeah married school okay yeah because these people could sneak in your marriage will do can sneak in and register or early for the class so they give us all the spots and so exactly my thing I have like four PhD students but they must just list that you have a certain credit threshold some of you must just be eternal students who are continuing education had like you know 300 credits or something like they must be in a PhD because otherwise why would they want so many classes but anyway ideas ideas should be cheap sacrosanct one of my favorite stories you can ask them you can actually a butcher about this he's shared it before where he was making this argument on a forum once before he was published and a certain other person was kind of of the opposite school of thought there's a school of thought that says and don't write this down because it's wrong writing is mystical right writing is about you know sitting and then you know the muse strikes I assume not to band and the muse strikes you and something like pops out of your head like Athena and it's just like somehow in between this it's like you you win a Pulitzer no that's probably not you know not feel it sir a national book war there you go and then you dropped in basketball team feeling that that's what it is and I don't subscribe to this at all okay I really really don't yep that's not the same sometimes cool inspiration that makes you because we all kind of go through that you'll have times you're like I'm just on fire today I don't know why you're writing it it's great and it's awesome but the thing to remember is for every writer who's a real pro that talk to they have moments like that and they have moments where it's pure Treasury where they sit and they it's like chopping wood as Howard family puts it you just hit and you chop the wood and you do what you know you need to do and at the end of the day in the book I have found that readers can't tell the difference between these two okay they can't tell the difference and that's because through the drafting process you make this one better and you take out all the pretentiousness of this one because I have a lot of contentiousness in it and in this one it'll probably be a little dry but you'll have some moments of inspiration and connections and this prose will get a little bit more engaging and this one will get a little less annoying and then they'll meet in the center and you'll have your level of writing that's pretty cool okay so anyway Jim Butcher charged me with this guy and the guys like no you you gotta have world-class ideas to be a world-class writer and Jim's like okay fine give me the give me the two worst ideas you can come up with and I would write a book about it and it'll be awesome and so the person told them okay I'm your idea start poking on and the lost Roman legion write a book about that and so I wrote this book called codasyl era where'd you eventually sold and became a big best-selling epic fantasy series okay you can go find that story online it's a great story if it's true codex Alera and ice is a cross between Pokemon on the rod lost Roman legion and Jim if you're watching this and I'm wrong why did you tell me when I asked you I didn't awesome question when I asked him in person I can't remember anyway ideas are cheap okay you are where you're right 50,000 words 50,000 words is boy tender baby it's 200 pages what double-spaced times there's a superior something like that so that's a pretty hefty trunk that's the reason I chose to chose 15,000 words is because that's what NaNoWriMo encourages people to do National Novel Writing Month where people try to write a novel and one month in November it's really hard to do unless you're writing full-time however a lot of people who get to 20,000 words and so I figure in this class 50,000 words is a pretty manageable goal it really shouldn't be that hard for you in order to do this though you're going to have to turn off your internal editor okay you are going to have to stop revising and rewriting a little bit we will talk about the differences between between outliners and and multi draft so what we're going to do is we are going to write every week we are going to submit a thousand words of that for writing group I would suggest that you um you don't worry that your writing group isn't going to keep up with what you're doing because you're gonna write more then you're writing your can read so I would suggest submitting your you know your your first thousand words and then your second and then your third and so forth that that makes sense even though you'll be writing like your 25th that week you just didn't have to get used to that idea conversely if you write something that standalone is like a new viewpoint something you could submit back to your writing group we do this over live journal we do this over live to rule because the first New Year's we did over email and people had all kinds of excuses about why their email didn't get sense or blaming their email server or or boy I I'm sure it got there and you're supposed to go on your spam folder so we um we jumped all that business and now host enough it on on LiveJournal because the reason for live journals it has you can create new accounts really easily and it has good friend protection meaning you have to bring somebody with you consent so that you have to print them to see your work that we are not posting your work online for everyone and it's very easy for your group them to see what you post it and to read it they can even leave feedback on the left or don't say it's a great tool for us in this class so you mean to your homework for this week I will not force you to to to submit new writing next weeks okay for next week we'll talk about what you can submit I'll give you a little bit of time to get going but your homework for next week is to set up that live journal Club and add me as a friend because otherwise you can't read your writing every year I have someone forget to add me then I sit down to read their week and it's like oh great yeah I'm not friends I can't see you're right except like trying to email you or contact somebody to get grouped like copy and paste and send it to me like the big pain so do it okay you don't forget to add me so do please create your life journal name like I said I'm here even if you already have a larger hometown because it'll help me keep track of who's and what group alright you know use your birth number and you know year and your first name and then I can like match you your face your writing it's so easy for me I know you want to be screw up with 17 or whatever it is that your your name is that your online name but please just be John 2011 group for instead for my sake okay so you're gonna join live journal you're gonna set up your thing you're going to add all your friends will split you up into writing groups at at the end of the class and then for next week submit something but it can be writing you've done already okay so you if you've already got a chapter them and you're gonna write submit submit part of that the rest of you you can submit an outline you want to be one outline you can submit a little piece of writing you've done before that you want feedback on this is this is trying to your freebie week where I let you get away with stuff that I won't let you get away with other wigs the rest the base you have to write submit writing you wrote during this class this semester not something you wrote last semester this semester the reason for that is that I want to put the boot to your head those of you who have been submitting the same thing to creative writing classes and to writing groups over and over again for the last three years I know there's one or two of you in this class stop it okay write new stuff this is what being a writer is all about okay other than that it's finished the fifty thousand words our final will be you turn the fifty thousand words and you hear mark mm Amit for me to be off her feet on and I'll give you a nice and depth critique on it and it should generally be the first two thousand words but there's something new at the beginning with a new viewpoint or something like that make it trying to make it a little self-contained not like your best two thousand words from like chapter 47 by the way never submit the best two thousand words from chapter 47 to an editor okay - we'll just pick your favorite words randomly throughout the book and submit them and a big long list and say look I have a good flute asaurus because that's gonna do you just as much good they want to see the beginning because that's what their readers are gonna see okay okay any questions on what we're doing in the class submit a thousand words ever makes your writing group read your writing for submissions do fifty thousand words by the end of the end of the year and you will give Nick probably almost certainly you might give me - if your writing is terrible but if you do all that I've never given lower than like a b-plus in fact honestly someone who's done all fifty thousand words all the reading in Turnitin I've ever Lord and they - this is this is about the goal of this class is to learn how to have good habits as a writer if I graded you based on how likely we're in published then there would be two people and these sorry there was a spray there would be two people in the history of the class who ended up getting A's because I have two students who got published and when I become full-time writers so I can't do that that's not really fair so I'm hoping there will be more students or that there already are more than I haven't haven't heard up but there are two that have gotten gonna be full-time writers that's kind of interesting isn't it I'm not going to say it's annoying because it's trying to steampunky [Music] let's talk about being a online a discovery writer versus an outliner okay discovery writers and outliners this is kind of getting into the idea of I'll preface this with the concept of less than two I want to teach you today lesson one this is about skill lesson two is it's about tools again not the man tools different writers write differently and aside from a few general principles there is no one way you have to do this okay now for the class I'm going to put certain restrictions on you to try and force you to use certain tools to see if they work for you at the end of the class you may very well decide that these tools don't work for you and discard them by tools I mean methods of writing has anyone ever had a teacher or a book you've read on writing telling you that you have to have an outline patiently you'll get these as you ever read that one it says you can never have an outline I think on writing by Stephen King says never useful this is because people who write these books or who um who do these small times they're great writers on writing by Stephen King is brilliant it's wonderful and Stephen King's a great writer however he said says don't use the writing group and he says don't really use an outline well those are tools that he uses different writers can use different tools and there's no one way to write book and this is best manifest by the idea of discovery writers without - because it's pretty stark and I found over the years that a lot of people falling from of these two camps and they're kind of mutually exclusive the discovery writers discovery writers are those writers who work best when they don't have a lot of structure this means that if if they have forced to write an outline ahead of time what happens to discovered writers is that they tend to get bored with that book by the time they don't get like because they feel like they just already done it and so they want to move on to something else or they feel like they're really constricted and the characters have no life because their life lives are determined or than ahead of time george RR martin is a discovery writer if you can't tell by how long it takes you to read books George O'Brien is discovered writer he calls use of the term Gardner which is a great term for a discovery writer discovery writers are those who tend to grow their story now we're not talking about this Muse mumbo-jumbo over here discovered writers are those they're still going to work on their stories every day it's not going to be about inspiration as much as it well inspiration is important but inspiration the real inspiration comes through lots of hard work and sweat and then finally something clips if that makes sense inspirations not scaring the wall until something weapons expiration is sitting and working until something close and so discovered writers do work better without an outline okay on the other side we have what we call outliners george Hartigan calls these architects which is a wonderful term this is my house builders so out liners out liners are those who if they sit down to write a book and there's just an empty open vastness in front of them they have no idea where to go and don't ever get going out liners work best when they know what their goal is they say oh I am shooting for this specific type of story and if I take this story and break it down into its components then I have this step this step in this step and they essentially are building a story through the the small pieces of small steps it's kind of engineer way to write a book and outliners will therefore build an outline for themselves an outline is not like it's heading one subheading B Yatta Yatta and outline is a sequence in the fence that you're using as a guide not to write your book okay architects tend to tend to have pretty explosive and things that come together really well if you think of books you've read that have really singer endings that authors were probably architects Orson Scott Card as a famous architect okay and he tends to do a lot of outlining for his books spends months outlining and then he says it sits out a rifle open a couple of weeks cuz he's done so much pre writing another friend of mine of the everyday Everson is a heavy outliner in fact he the way he writes his books and he writes a very in-depth outline almost as a storage proposal and pitch he's he's famous enough and has you know about publishing the street he doesn't need to write proposals for his focusing just say hey I want to write about this and they'll let him and they'll give you money but it's been you guys these big proposals because it helps me write the book and then when he sits down to write his book he like takes each sentence and the proposal doesn't look like an outline I've seen them they're just like long you know long proposals in prose form but he takes each sentence and kind of expands that and makes the next sentence expands back and turns it into a book that way he's also famous for writing with vacations he actually goes out hiking takes down his headset and big taste a scene and then has it on someone transcribe it and then meet audience on page so a lot of people tend to fall in one of these camps a lot of you will be in between but you'd be surprised at how many people tend to fall into one of these camps the thing about it is you really don't know for sure which one of these are or in which situations which it doesn't work better for you until you try and both out in this class you can do one or the other but if you're going to be an outliner you've got one week to make your outline and that should be enough okay let's talk about kind of labels and qualities of these two types of writers discovery writers percent but discovered writers tend to like to revise a lot they like to get it just right before they move on and so you'll find the discovery writers what they'll do is they'll write a chapter I'm going to like okay that's pretty good they'll do a couple drafts on it and then they'll write the next chapter and explore the characters of going you'll think oh now I know better where my book is going so Lou go back in the rewrite the first chapter a couple times and then they'll be read the second chapter a couple times and then they'll write a third check and be like oh I've discovered my books right now and then they'll jump back and start over again which Chapter one and do this over and over and over again if any of you have written you know chapter one of your book like twelve times then this might be a problem you're blowing you know I see someone laughing that you did it yeah then this might be your problem discovered writers generally need a kind of that kick to the head and keep going they need to learn to just keep going because what a discovery guide writer is really doing is writing a really long outline for their book and then when you start over have you finished it your revision we usually be pretty dramatic because then you'll know where your books going and you'll be able to combine different things that really well so disturbing writers need to keep going most of the time the other thing discovered writers have a problem with is endings because they don't know where they're going the starboard writers tend to get to like the 90% art mark of their book and then be like alright I guess it ends this works okay in the literary fiction where the I guess intends ending is kind of like the the main ending that people do and then it ended but it doesn't work so well in popular fiction where people actually want you know resolution and these sorts of things and so discovered writers need to learn how to write endings and usually what they need to do is finish their book give it to people and brainstorm that ending so that when they do their second drive they can point toward that ending more I see you nodding a lot are you discovered writers yeah that way on the other side over here outliners how do i unders have something they called world builders disease a lot of times world bitters disease is you love building a setting and tweaking it and coming up with the perfect world that you're gonna write and so you spend 20 years right in the perfect world and never actually get around to writing your book this is the big problem with with architects another big problem with architects is that they tend to like rip through a first draft and be like alright that's okay and then just throw inside and start on something new this is what I did yeah yes tomorrow thirteen books before I saw one I finished around like hey that was fun I'll do another one and then immediately was more excited about the next project than this project the I'm excited about the next thing tends to be a bit of an outliner architect thing though can fall into both the thing is you'll probably have attributes of both of these depending on what you're doing and you'll probably use different aspects of these for different parts of writing through my history the writer I've found that I can use both tools for different situations I tend to architect my world to my settings and discovery rounded characters works very well for me helps me keep my characters a little bit fresh that helps me keep them alive rather than feel like their life is written out of them but it also lets me have exclusive endings the problem with doing this means that my characters have line-item veto over the outline and so I often have to stop and because I'm an architect I can't just let them run wild as to a lot of discovery runs would you I just thought was okay they wouldn't do that I have to rebuild my outline and so I can have to go back to the outlining stage several times during the writing football which can be kind of frustrating when you want to you know just making progress you might know this character wouldn't do that the person they'd become I have to rebuild my entire plot I've gotten good at doing that but it has ruined books for me early on in my career once I didn't publish or it made some certain bugs take a lot longer because I didn't quite understand this process but my children's books I completely discovery write just for a fun exercise if I try to do an epic fantasy that way it's at but in 50,000 words I can discover and write a pretty decent book it comes out the way I wanted to I can't discovery write it over a hundred thousand words and that's just what I've discovered about myself I need that goal and I need to have that outline in order to keep multiple plot threads together so yeah yes now that outline for some parts of it is like a paragraph here in a paragraph there yeah that page this book is about this but I at least know where I'm going a face like that and you look find that a lot of discovered writers do very well they have one point on their outline which is it ends here and when the discovery writers have that one point in the outline then it can be really helpful for them to have that better ending and complete their goal focused and you'll find it architects do a little bit better when they let themselves covered write a few things they build themselves a framework but then build in some wiggle room here and there that they learn themselves so how to actually that Google room works for them for me it's the characters for you it might be something else and you'll find that that adds some spontaneity here both these are different tools and so the idea is as writers and in this class my goal is going to be to try and give you a bunch of these tools to explain the tools to show what's useful about them and what might be on problems with them and let you kind of collect them in tool box for yourself so that as you're writing to try them out and see if they work for you if they don't toss them aside writing groups are a tool we will be using writing groups in this class for instance um a writing group can really make your book better but some of you is just not going to be that useful it's much more useful for architects than that then is route liners generally architects then for discovery writers generally that's because discovered writers folks are uninformed and if they show unfinished writing to people then they sucker up sometimes from gee wouldn't it be cool right so you wouldn't it be cool if your characters the destiny like oh that's so cool I need to write that book instead and then you add that into your book and then someone says oh but would it be cool if you do this new like yeah soon would be and you have that people can suddenly your books like the schizophrenic hot spots for like trying to you know be like somehow a military science fiction paranormal romance at the same time as you like and I must have vampires vampires are cool they can't be like regular vampires so they're going to drink antifreeze that can be really troubling let's talk about how to do risers a few simple things a few simple things about writing groups that will help you write eager to be more effective what you're going to do is you're going to submit your thousand words on what I say Monday night yeah Monday night okay if your internet goes out go to your roommate your two next-door neighbors your parents house and post it okay just get it up there by Wednesday morning so your group can have time to read it you're going to read their submission of a thousand words and you're going to take some notes I want you to come with things to stay okay don't just say it's good okay no it's good ah that's useless not helpful um what are you going to do you are going to take specific notes on what you liked okay saying it's good as useless saying this characters really engaging to me and I want to see where they go this other character was not so engaged with me I can't even remember remember who they are they're not very memorable those are two excellent comments for a writing group you should is a bad comment okay no you are not telling on how to write your book you were giving feedback remember you love to treat yourself when you're reading their from their piece like sometimes they'll show the test um ship movies flight and test audience to judge their reaction at that point you know the test audience is not saying you know mr. Lucas I really think you should know they're saying yeah have fun here I was bored here that's what you're looking to give them okay so number one remember you good feedback what I mean by that is remember to say good things too okay remember to say they notes on what you liked about it in specifics so to be specific three learn how to write Brandon um be specific number three be descriptive not prescriptive okay this one's very hard to get down but it's going to be a really great tool for you and all feedback to writers you know describing your reaction to it is so much more useful to say this is what's wrong with it okay their race for that it's medieval number one it's not so argumentative which is good you're critiquing someone's baby someone's personal writing and so saying I was a little bit bored here it's actually gonna be easier on them and saying you should make this more exciting plus it's actually more truthful at some points they may want you to be bored I don't know but they might want you to be bored they're like this character is a boring character and I want you to breed this and be like all right you get on or they get on with it like the character is feeling there are times when they want you to be bored so rather than if you say make this more exciting you may be under money but they're actually trying to do now most of the time they're not gonna write a boring character intentionally but they may write an annoying character intentionally I've done it before okay and then may wants you to be a little confused about something because they're gonna POW you with an explanation in the next scene and it's all going to come together so do you telling them I'm confused here is actually more useful because like okay let's see it for the next scene clears that up or if they're still confused cuz sometimes a little bit confusion is good sometimes a little bit you know sometimes with anticipation is good yeah I really want to have to answer to this that's a good thing grab it but if the great writers say you should answer this right now he need answer this right now that can be the wrong advice because the anticipation is what makes us good breeding okay so be scripted be specific remember to get good feedback and number four ignore wow this is really bad writing I'll take that word at least readable money go small stuff ignore things that are little don't tell them when they spell the word wrong ignore that by sitting on your writing group and your your first leading comment is you know I think you're I think you're using the word and too much I'm gonna throw something at you okay maybe at the end of the session that's something you can mention but you need to lead with thought characters and setting okay Jones let talk about the pros and less it's a big issue if they're using the passive voice a ton that's something you can bring up but let's leave with the big things and then start talking about the pros okay pros is important but the worry is that people start focusing too much on sentence level things this is all gonna get revised and rewritten anyway and we want to be focusing in this level this is alpha reads this is early draft everyone's writing is gonna be rough if you don't have time to revise it and so there's gonna be lots of typos there's gonna be lots of awkward sentence construction and that's just what how it's going to be and it's okay all right so save that stuff to the end if you have to do it okay don't lead with it now if you're big workshop there's one big rule I'm going to enforce this one and it will also make me throw things at you so I want you to write it in big letters good hockey if you are being workshop you are not allowed to speak let me say it again if you are being workshop you cannot say a word every time I tell this to people I'll go sue to their writing groups and everyone is ignored it this is your hard best rule when it's your turn shut up okay there's really good reasons for this everybody who talks about workshops mentions it your job is to be the personal big clipboard standing at the back of that movie theater while people watch writing down who they said on here who they were excited here oh they look a little bit bored your job is not to say hey guys this really does work just wait I promise you or no no it's really quite brilliant if you see this thing in this thing in this thing it's gonna prove how smart I am okay that's what you're doing when you're talking okay even if you think you aren't that's what you're doing what it's doing is it's number one it's biasing the reader when you're saying yeah that gets fixed next chapter you just biased your readers and diluted your your the quality of your feedback okay you want them next week to say well I've gotten up again so that it actually now all works that's what you want to hear or you want me to hear yeah the answer came but I was confused because you know it just didn't come soon enough you want to hear those things okay you also don't want to put people into an argumentative mindset you don't want to defend yourself and not talking is the best way to avoid defending yourself because if someone says you know I just didn't think as characters really interesting you're like but they're fascinating you know then they lead a life of danger in crime they're really interesting to the best character written I think you're stupid you start saying these things you're gonna be sponsoring an environment where people stop giving you good feedback so really I'm serious about this don't pause when it's your turn I will make an allowance for at the end of the session if you have a question or two that you want to direct it direct the conversation toward at the end of your ten minutes you can do that but there's usually not much time for it and you should really not pretend I didn't even say that okay you can't do it if you need to but it's really just avoid saying anything when it's your time to turn in your workshop you'll find the workshop is much better if you Obama avoids saying anything now the thing to keep in mind is I generally suggest outside of this class that people workshop pieces that they had completed not let me do that in this class so be aware of the whole gene that'd be cool possibility okay if people are not being prescriptive you're not gonna have as much problem with that if they're being descriptive but still resist the urge to let you're ready to ruin your book because they'll try to don't give you the feedback and to make it much better but they'll also kind of try to ruin it because they'll try to make it regular new writers they'll try to make your book into the technical they would write rather than the type of book that you want to write and they'll do this kind of unconsciously now there's work shoppers when you're getting a feedback try to look at what the book is trying to be and try to gear your feedback for what the book is trying to be rather than what you want it to be don't try and take their team Perrineau months and just because you know you don't like team for paranormal romance trying to turn it into something else I will try to group the writing groups of similar interested people are together and writing group so that shouldn't happen as much but just keep that in mind all right and when you're being workshop right there on their feedback put it on it you have a piece of paper and then set it aside for when you do your revision of the book when you do a revision of the book look back at the feedback read the scene again having had that distance and probably having finished a lot more of the book and then you can decide which of the speed that is going to work for you and which of it is most of the feedback that's going to work you're gonna be like yeah that's really right and be after you know several weeks of working on this and being farther ahead you realize yeah I can fix this this can this is really good feedback that's not better some of it will just be dumb and that's okay we all give them feedback sometimes because we don't know where the book is going and things like that and so don't worry about that I usually take one in three suggestions that my writing your dates may be one in two probably more wanted to but I have had two full time professional writers am i reading through with me and they make really good comments so for that take that for what it's worth so there's your addiction we're chopping um yeah yeah yeah that Stephen King's advice - and I'm writing that says generally if someone makes a comment and he is uncertain about it he ignores it unless two or three people start making the same comment then he gives it more serious spot but if it's your opinion versus one person's opinion it's your book so don't change it and this is how we remind writing group works really well sit down number one there's a leader starts the time clock just W can hold enough for people this piece I'm talking since alright let's start just with you know one person we're gonna start at 80 all right we're gonna start with Katie speaks behind what would good things what did you like about this and then we give the specifics of what people like for just a couple of minutes with anyone throwing something out as a group discussion then leaders said okay let's move on to things that could use work what things did you feel you know over your emotional moments do you feel more weakness of the piece wherever you forward we're ready confuse this sort of things people start throwing the mouth issues if some of them prepared don't do your reading in class read for you do your reading class doesn't count you um you don't get points for that and this is by the way all on our system I hope that you're not you know cheating in at the Lourdes University on your honor or my class doesn't even really matter for your table for your for your major or for anything is an elective so it's not worth it just besides I'm a pushover magnet failure anyway then go into a discussion of what the major things is leave with the biggest things work your way down to smaller issues and they get on time with the smallest ones just move on when that clock is ten minutes ago

Channel: zmunk

Views: 37,995

Rating: 4.9357429 out of 5

Keywords: brandon sanderson, BYU, Creative writing, how to write, outliners, discovery writers, ideas are cheap, writing groups

Id: AKHlanlzaIY

Length: 50min 44sec (3044 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 19 2016