Sanderson 2012.13 - Revisions and Other Misc Topics

um first tip is I've found that you can be more heavy-handed than you think most of us and first try through our actually too subtle I learn these things by the way drive us thank you I learn these things by giving my pieces to my writing group people I trust seeing what they pick up on and what they guess and what they don't and it's a process of trial and error how do they respond what today what do they figure out and overall I found that they I need more than my first instincts say that I need that may not be true for every one of you but for me it's it's proven true the other thing is to be aware that all readers are going to be in a different place regarding foreshadowing meaning some like to rip apart a text and think very analytically and they are very very hard to fool and that's just a fact of life others um willingly suspend their disbelief and want to believe like the characters do so they don't their mind doesn't spoil the ending for them as they go and ever there's everyone in-between and so you can't fool all the people all the time as so it goes you're looking to have a satisfying experience for the readers and so I generally put it in a wide range of different things to be discovered some things that are fairly simple some things that are layered several deep several deep and that helps with the foreshadowing in that the very deep ones oftentimes the the really analytical people will actually stop looking because they think they figured it out and they have figured out some things and that's good but then they'll still be a few things to surprise them but if everything is so at you know 17 layers deep then those who don't want to spend time figuring things out are going to feel like your story is just one surprise after another and that can gig that can grueling they can actually be a bad thing so I tried to try to larium layer and put a variety of different things to be discovered the way to maintain a good working relationship with your editor is to have an agent whose job it is to be the bad guy or girl in a lot of those situations they're professionals they know they know how to maintain a good relationship it's not something you have to worry about terribly much but an agent one of the reasons to have an agent is so that they can go play hardball when you need hardball played and it doesn't then force you to do it so that's one good aspect of it keeping good relationship with your agent there shouldn't be you know that shouldn't be a major concern for you because in a good agent author relationship you are their client that's like keeping saying how do I keep a good relationship with my attorney well their job is to you know they don't work for you they don't I mean they do but it's not the I hire you it's the your I'm your client sort of sort of relationship and you know agents all the ones I've met are very professional at doing that if they you have an age new isn't then they're probably not a great agent and that's something to look at scan set they are very good at maintaining a professional relationship one thing to keep in mind as I said before is that you should look to be in the driver's seat take advice from your agent but don't just do everything your agent says and it should be presented you as advice this is what I would do with you having the final say because you are in charge of your properties you're in charge of your stories and they are like an attorney someone who works and stays on retainer in order to give you advice in the field yeah okay yeah nine times out of ten you should not use a pen name it is something that newer writers think about a lot that all the professional life stock professionals I've talked to say there's there are very few good reasons okay there are lots of okay reasons but there are very few good reasons to use a pen name and the conventional wisdom is don't stress it and you probably don't want to use one the good reasons to use a pen name did we talk about this if your name is the same as a famous person's name you want a pen name if your name is something embarrassing you want a pen name otherwise you usually don't and so if you really want to use one it's not a big deal but you don't you don't trademark a pen name usually I mean you can you can trademark your name if you really feel like it but you need to be you need to be publishing on a very large scale level that you would be worried that people would be using your name to endorse products in order to generate sales and until you hit a certain level of fame your name is not going to be worth anything and it would be detrimental for someone to try and use your name to endorse their product because everyone's going to say who and so so I would not worry about that at all I mean you submit to the agent under your own name submit the editors of your own name when and if you sell something if you really want a pen name go for it and once you hit on if you're if you're hitting number one consistently on the bestseller list then think about trademarking I don't have my name trademark we are trademarking Mistborn but not my name there's really no reason to JK rowling does have her name trademarked so that her name can't be used to endorse products you know it shouldn't be anyway because there is common law trademark sort of ideas but just for her it's it's better to have that trademark protection so did that answer your question yeah okay how prevalent right no that's yeah exactly yeah no that's actually a fairly legitimate question that runs up often how rare can it be when everybody you meet is is doing it in Miss porn I did it by making sure that there was one high level profile member of the care of the crew who didn't have any of the powers that was one why I did that intentionally so that we would say look not everybody has this but it really is a trick I mean you don't go you know you can watch movie like x-men and say yeah most everybody's normal but the the x-men have powers and we're fine with it how do you convey that um world-building I would guess you know early on you know I have a Miss for knighted with a scene where kelsier is first introducing vin to the magic and it explains how rare it is I'm using a Watson character in that case lots of characters one who is not familiar with what's going on and that can therefore have it explained to them and you'll find this very commonly uses alert advice that's what I do there this is how rare it is you're even more rare than that there there aren't very many of these around reader take that for accepted even though everybody you're going to meet is one of these and it's it you just got to get your your reader to suspend their disbelief on that that's a pretty legit problem so that you've noticed it happens and it's it's it's kind of tough to figure out but I do think it's something you can fix and tweaking so all right there yeah all right same with yeah same with x-men Xavier is gathering these how was gifted youngsters is that what it's called and in putting them together so so yeah all right right here uh-huh did I not talk to you guys about revision I talked about how I don't like it let's let's do a few few things on revision then this is a this is a tough one because revision seems to be even more individual to the to the various writers than other things in writing and other things in writings are still pretty individual and I've also mentioned that I really became a good writer when I learned how to revise with my process and it felt like this was not something I could learn well until I've written a number of books so I had a sense for what had worked in some books and what hadn't worked in other books so then when I had a sense that something wasn't working I could try to figure out how to push it toward what was working so it was it a lot of this came by instinct and and experience and now after the fact I'm trying to figure out how to explain what I learned to do the problem is everyone is so different particularly on that that initial spectrum we talked about in class multi drafters and and one drafters our discovery writers and architects they both seem to approach it very differently my process is this I write the book straight through without revising I change things mid-stride if they need to be changed I add characters knowing I'll need to go back in and add foreshadowing or you know add that character into early chapters I will cut characters you can see me doing this if you if you're really interested in war breaker which I pursued drafts I posted chapters as I wrote them and you can see me just dropping characters out and saying this character is not in the book anymore and you can see me adding in themes and whatnot you can see me get to the ending of war breaker and say wow the sending that I was planning is like 80% there but the 20% miss is actually a pretty glaring miss I need to do some of it revising to foreshadow something new to bring in as an element to the end you see that happening as I go so I'm taking notes as I write on a set in a separate document of things I've changed in Chapter so and so I added this character in Chapter sone so I squeaked this character's personality for these in these ways and I felt it worked notes to myself I'm going to have to really want to what look at chapter seven I felt that you know that day when I was writing I wasn't feeling that it was just awesome and so in the revision I should look at that again and see if I was just having an off day or or if it really is awful or things like that you know I'll do all of this stuff keeping notes to myself often really these will output in three stars and sticking to the top of the chapter after I finish it and then I can collect those afterward so I finished that completely through I don't stop writing that first draft you it's very important for me I've found there are times when I've stopped because another project has come my way or something like that and for me getting back into it is usually disastrous it takes lots of time and work and the first things I do if I've been away from something for too long are just terrible um and it one of the number one killers of projects for me is too big a gap between in the middle of the book and I've learned that about myself that is because I think of the the way that I approach things if I don't know where the characters are if I if I'm not really into who they are and what what they're doing I'm not going to be able to keep pushing forward even though I have an outline because the feel will be off for me and so usually if I start stop a book I have to go start from beginning and and read through it and do a heavy draft which I normally don't like to do and then pick it up so I don't stop that is 1.0 1.0 is is straight through now 2.0 is I go back to the beginning of the book after just after I finish it well everything's still fresh where the characters ended up is still very clear to me and I start on page one and I read through it fix all those things that I've taken notes for myself to fix all the major continuity problems and things like this that I noticed as I was writing it so is is you know this is basically continuity everything I knew needed to be done 3.0 for me is my my first polish and I do this generally at that point I will have the 2.0 and I will sit it aside and let it sit for a little while this isn't a huge gap always this may just be a couple of weeks and maybe cut a couple of months sometimes it's much longer than that this can be a big gap for me it doesn't it doesn't matter if it's a very long one I'll be okay on the 2.0 put to 3.0 when I sit down to do 3.0 my goal is cut 15% line by line just looking for you know too many to be verbs passive voice repetition what what I've told you we do we're real often a lot of us writers will explain something and then show it right after or will in diet in someone's head talk about something and then a dialogue convey the same thing we do this a lot it's very natural as a writer I cut that stuff out I try to trim I look for excess world-building that I've just been trying to figure out for myself for extra excess character where I've been writing my way into a character and I shrink condense clean up I also look to make you know more powerful descriptions again usually by cutting and looking for more concrete language and things like this all of the stuff that they talk about in your Inglot most your English classes your other writing classes where I talk about pros this is when I do it is the 3.0 draft 3.0 draft is then usually where I will send it sound little gap and then here it goes to alphas and that's usually a fairly large gap depending on the book if I can make if I can get it I don't get this all the time lately because of how tight deadlines are but in a perfect world this goes to alpha readers that is for me alphas are agent editor writing group wife and so I'll start workshopping it in my writing group chapter by chapter I'll have my agent my editor read it and I'll get all these comments back six months is what I'm really looking for a six month gap or so a lot of people talk when they talk about revision talked about how important it is to get some distance from the project and I find that for almost all of us this is very very true distance from the project between an early draft in your next draft is going to be wonderful for you in most cases because what it'll do is it'll you've gotten the book out of your system it'll let you be a little less paternal or maternal toward this project you will be able to come back to it and be able to see it more as somebody you'll never be able to escape you know your own biases but more somebody who's approaching a book fresh without your as many your preconceptions you'll be able to kill your darlings in other words kill your darlings mean the check the scenes and chapters that you love so much that you think you're beautiful but what are which are not actually contributing to the story and maybe taking away from the story you'll have a much easier time doing this if you've had had a break I usually - new writers suggest and this is what I did is write a new book if you're looking to do this professionally two books a year is a good goal for you therefore you have it you can do a six-month break really you're not going to be getting two books a year because what you're going to be doing is you're going to be spending even if you're you write quickly like I did you'll be spending six to eight months writing a book and then you'll still have to be spending another three or three months or four months total revision on that same book so really you're producing a book in a year but what you do is you you take off that six months or eight months to write a quick first draft on the next one and then you can go back to this one and do your draft and you can do a 4.0 this is if you're using my style by the way you don't have to 4.0 is incorporating other people's incorporating alphas I don't incorporate everything as I said I take one in three comments usually but that six months really allows me to dig into high level stuff again in ways I couldn't like sometimes in the 3.0 polish I'll be making notes to myself and all during these six months I'll be making notes myself sometimes fundamental changes that need to be made and in the Mistborn series of mists born to this was some of the stuff with doc knee annotations where I had to actually move where the climactic last scene happened from up in the mountains back to the city and Luth Adele and this required an extensive rewrite of you know ten twelve chapters in way of Kings this was adding in Adeline Dowell and our son is a viewpoint character to split off half of what had been Dallin ours character in this book I had a character I told you guys this before right I had a character who is seeing these visions and in the original draft he really worried that he was mad and because of this kind of internal turmoil am I going crazy and things like this he actually came off very wishy-washy as a character particularly for a first book introducing someone I wanted to be presented as a very strong character his his psychosis and my mad was was very hindering and I didn't know what to do with that until I decided to split it off and give the that conflict to his son which thought which kept saying my dad's mad this my father that I loved is going crazy where I could have Dowlen or say no something important is happening this is you know I've got it I've got to see this through I don't know what's happening to me but I have to trust it and therefore you end up with two stronger characters a son who cares deeply for his father is conflicted by what's Happ with his father but it's still very strong in this opinion that my dad's going crazy and you have your debt his dad who's saying no this is important these visions whatever is happening is something and you see through we have conflict between the two of them we have characters who really like each other but who are butting heads a lot and they're both stronger characters because of it this is not a change I could have made without the time off and seeing the perspective of the writing group members and getting their read where they were saying these things about downer that I'd worried that readers would say sometimes you worry about things that don't actually turn out to be a legitimate worry and sometimes they're just really legit worries and this one was and so that was an important thing 4.0 is usually the hardest revision for me this is the tough one this is where I am in memory of light right now this is where fundamental changes to a book often need to be made and it's actually harder for me to do a 4.0 than to write a new 1.0 and this is why this is what stopped me for years in my writing process was not being able to do this one and it's not just the Alpha reader things it's knowing which fundamental things are broken and how to fix fundamental things it was difficult for me to figure out it's almost always character related for me because I explore my characters and you end up with something like Dallin R which I talked about or or say Zed in book three of them is born where the characters something's going wrong with them and I'm not sure how to fix it so 4.0 is that one then I will usually do another polish and where I'm basically doing this but my focus is less on cutting now because I've got it cut down still do a little bit but my focus on the second polish is just really cleaning up the language in the dialogue and the the viewpoints making sure the viewpoints are strong that we always know whose viewpoint we're in and things like this and then I give it to betas and these are my reader-response things these are my um you know some of the some of the very close fans and fandom that I trust or friends that aren't my writing group and things like this I give it to betas I get their feedback at this point this one is a shorter thing but then I'll do a 6.0 which is often you know I've sent this one back to my editor and my editors got me back another full set of comments I will do a 6.0 then where I incorporate my editors response to my comments beta reader comments any last things I think I need to fix and then at that point most of the revision is done 7.0 and 8.0 are the coffee edit and the proofreads which are done in conjunction with my um with my my publisher and so those are both polishes yes yes it depends on how let's adapt some of this to you it really depends on your process and things like this and I'll go over some other ways I've seen people revise this stage right here if you're wanting to follow my format it depends the kit does writing group work for you that's one question I'd ask myself workshopping doesn't work for everyone it works great for me but if it doesn't work for you you then are not going to be giving it to your writing group but you are going to need some sort of group of alpha readers who are good enough to tell you to give you their descriptive responses without going into into oh you should make your book like this and those are important people to find usually I want my alpha readers to be writers themselves and my beta readers not to be because writers I've found usually as long as they can keep them that not cross that line between you should do it the way I want you to they are much better at identifying you know things such as this character feels very static whereas beta readers responds that'll be I'm bored here and you know they're like I'm bored I think you should there should be more action where they're really wrong what really is happening as a character is static and there's not a sense of motion in that character but the beta readers answer will be I think you should cut this or I think there should be more action or they'll try to fix it but they don't know how to fix it and they'll usually try to fix it in wrong ways good alphas won't do that good alphas will be able to um to judge and so a writing group can be helpful other writer friends can be helpful doing a trade you want to get a variety of these though because you don't want to just give it to one person and then hear whatever every person has to say if you can give it to four people and one person says something and the other three don't that tells you something like okay that's one one person's quirk everyone else has quirks there are things we will not like about a book that the majority people who read it won't notice won't care about or will like and so if you also have you know three or four alphas you can say to them hey after you go through and you're collecting all the comments did any of the rest of you feel like this or stuff like that which is why I like having a writing group yes I I can't correspond it's for a writing group I correspond before for like a now for like my editor and agent but I also feel for me it's good to have a variety between workshop and and agent editor because Asian editor will read the book all the way through which gives a different perspective writing groups are notoriously bad at picking out pacing issues they will think things are paced way too slowly when they're not is usually the problem because if you're reading a book one chapter a week it's going to feel like a glacial pace to you and you'll try to compensate but you'll do a bad job of it whereas someone who reads the whole thing through will have a much better sense of pacing but they'll forget the little continuity problems chapter by chapter that a writing group will tell you and a writing group Ross will show you where characters start to veer off you can go back to look at what the early comments are in you know you'll see where they like them where they don't like the character and things like that it can give you just a better OVR overall way of pinpointing problems but they writing groups do have problems with some things like pacing another thing of writing groups I think I told you this early on is if one person in a writing group notices something it can become a seed that makes everyone in the writing group notice that same thing and harp on it over and over again when really it's not an important issue and so you have to be aware of that that you know if you if one person says wow you described everything is being orange why do you do that then from then on every writing group they can be like more orange and until you feel like you know you are just your book is terrible because everything is orange when really no one would notice this it's just normal but the writing group someone highlighting it makes them all notice it that happens a lot in reading groups right from your perspective how much percentage-wise especially from us trying to get yeah product from beginning to read submit and what kind of proportion proportions writing the book definitely takes the most time um I would say for me all revisions are about totally half the length of the original writing time so I would anticipate spending about six months on a book that took me a year it may go a little bit longer that's not counting proofread and copy edit for me proofread and copy I you're not gonna have to worry about proofreading copy edit until you sell the book for me my assistant handles the proofreading copy edit so I don't have to worry too much about that those stages so yeah that's what I would say about six months about half one month for every two that's going to be different depending and we should talk about the fact that this is a process used by by by someone who does do a lot of outlining and drafting or a lot of outlining and and architecture stuff plotting and things like this and my process to doing a 4.0 draft is I will take all these notes and I will look through them all and I will actually organize and by importance I'll put the the most important widespread sweeping things you know fixed down on ours character at the top I'll put medium level things such as mention this thing three times in appropriate places to foreshadow this event at the end that's a medium level thing I need to do it you know a few times they need to be able to watch out for it but it's not like you know across the entire book fundamental changes at the end will be chapter stuff and the chapter stuff I'll just put in that the chapter heading you know I'll move all the fundamental stuff over to this document and then I'll have a chapter by chapter of with my writing group of things I actually think should be done and I'll add anything my editor mentions in just a given chapter to that so then when I sit down to revise I will go to the chapter I will open up the document of fundamental changes next to on the same screen as the one I'm working on and I'll be watching for places where this fundamental changes may be made or the median level changes where I can make some tweaks for them and I'll read through the chapter I will then actually go to the document of chapter-by-chapter little problems look through all of them again toss out ones I don't agree with now that I've read the chapter again and these should be things that you can then just go back and fix right say you know oh the the Glock doesn't have doesn't have an actual safety it has a trigger safety what's one that came up lately and so in this chapter when you mentioned it you're you know the safety is you need to be watching make sure you're using a trigger safety for her Glock instead of instead of a switch safety and so I go back I'm like oh yeah that's right I go back you know I search for safety in that chapter I go and make sure I described it right and then I cross that thing off my list delete it and it's done if you can make one change and then delete and it's done then it goes in the the small level things for me and that's how I approach draft and I will get to more stuff on on discovery writing in a minute yes no I just some a submit larger chunks to the writing group if I'm on a deadline if I'm not I can wait and it depends way of kings the writing group was doing twenty thousand word chunks yep and then for the next um for the next year plus I've been doing two thousand word chunks to make up for it and so we're almost through another book that way and that one we've been doing two thousand word chunks on like short stories and things like that so so yeah you guys can can afford to take longer than the six month and sometimes what I'll do is I'll be going through and my six months is up I've done half the book in revision I'll actually go do my 4.0 in fact this happens very frequently and our warned readers I'll do the four and the five I'll run my alpha readers by the way from this point on we're in we're in 5.0 instead of 3.0 which means that these fundamental things have been changed you're going to notice some shifts you'll just have to deal with it and they do and that happens very frequently all right yes yep that's what happens just as things yeah bouncing between writing and revising that's about it one project I'm also planning that's the three stages you know prewriting writing revising I'm swapping between them at various points it depends whatever whatever I have to work on I mean I've said how much time I generally spend revising but there are years when you know it's all revisions because I've written several books the year before and then I spend eight months doing revisions on those books there are years where I spent a lot of time writing and don't do as many revisions it just depends on you know you're looking for too much structure I'm a writer I don't do this for structure I don't have a desk you guys are understand desks are for people who you know add numbers or things I have a couch and a laptop if I have to work at a desk then something is wrong if I have to know you know a it's almost even a if I have to get up at a certain time something's wrong in my life I once spoke to David Drake and David Drake and you know this is gonna be different from different people but David Drake he intentionally bought I'm he's a science fiction/fantasy out there fairly fairly popular one he bought a big huge plot of land I think I'm thinking something like I mean amazingly like got 200 acres or something on the middle of nowhere um and he got he went and he moved there with his family and he does his thing and he he told me said I never take any sort of appointment or any sort of job or anything that requires me to arrive at a certain time that is my life you want to work with me there is no certain time it has to be between you know on this day within these third number of hours if you can get there great if you can't have it we'll have a back-up plan then he says yes and if it's raining he doesn't he rides a motorcycle if it's raining he doesn't leave hey Qasim says sorry I'm not coming and he says that's that's the life he leads as a writer to be very free and relaxed other writers don't work that way Eric Flint often talks about how much of a binge writer he is where he gets you know almost all of his writing done in a given year during a couple of two-month periods and all the rest of the time he's just doing all the other stuff that comes with writing doing appearances doing doing or revisions things like that but he sets aside those two months and he says I'm not going to do anything there's nothing you can't you pick as those two months I'm writing only and I don't exist in this world and he won't he will not you know that's then he schedules that out so that he knows ahead of time these two months you know you won't be able to talk to me you won't be able to call me because I'm working Rogers to go take writers retreats and things like that to do this I mean it's a it's a it's a weird weird job and there are a lot of quirky individuals who get to set their own schedules and so guess what happens but I do want to talk about other writers processes so that you so you understand this is my process it's what I've worked out over years that works well for me the other style of process is really the more instinctive process used by a lot of discovery writers like my friend Kailen who's um recently sold a few books to tour she writes a book and she will stop and do edits mid book quite frequently if she thinks oh this isn't working out like I want I'll just I'll go and experiment with it this way or I'll go experiment with this way she will frequently finish a book by by she'll frequently finish a book and then set it aside and take a two or three year gap and then should come back and start it from page one again I treated all that time to kind of work on it in her head about how she wants to fix it and she doesn't approach it goal based like this she approached it purchase it very instinctively I write it I see how it's feeling if it's not right I will put it away and I'll stop writing it now right on something else I don't put things away she'll put it away and you know Ray Bradbury says this he had he says he has a drawer of hundreds of unfinished stories that he stopped partway through because he wasn't it wasn't right yet and he'll come back to that story every day he'll pick out a few stories and and and type at them and work on them and then file them away again and and things like this that works very well for him it's it's it's going to be your own thing figuring it out and the problem with this is I've mentioned before all of my I realized about a year or two ago that all the best writers I knew were actually better revisers than they were writers that goes for Dan it goes for kay lid on that goes for Eric goes for Jan see all of my friends who are really good writers are all actually better revisers than they are writers they don't have very clean first drafts I have fairly clean first drafts but I'm the only architect among them among the group and that's kind of a you know our first drafts you can go read war breaker you can see what I mean by a fairly clean first draft yes there are problems but it still reads like a book and for me it's getting that extra 20% to make it to make it awesome whereas for someone like Dan he writes it and needs you know 60% but he doesn't do all the planning ahead time he writes it out and he's like wow needs huge fundamental changes that's fun and then he goes and does these huge fundamental changes I hate that but he likes this on stage so all right there's there's my thing on revision I wish I could give you more it comes down to knowing your own process and knowing what you like you know when things are working for you what does that mean when you get done with the day's worth of writing what and you feel just that was awesome what about it was awesome what about it worked when you read some scenes in your writing you're like wow that's way better than I remember it being what about it is way better like why and that's what you're shooting to learn how to do more and more it's a great question you probably need to ask a different writer because I personally am NOT an emotional person it's it's a weird thing that I have I have kind of the opposite of whatever whatever it is that causes other people to have wild emotional variants my wife when we were first dating was like I'm dating data and it really is some people have I have whatever the opposite of bipolar is where you know people are like other people are like this you know in their emotional spectrum and I'm like this I basically feel the same every day I don't have bad you know depressed days I don't feel depressed there days I don't feel like working as much as others those usually because I have a head cold or have allergies or something but I don't I don't get I don't never been depressed it just doesn't happen to me I've never been so excited that I you know scream or things like that that doesn't happen to me either if people's emotional states are you know a0 is debts the depression and 100 is like the huge air you know bashing of excitement I'm at a 70 always and that's who I am and so how do you write through that you need to talk to other people the other thing is I haven't had huge tragedies in my life yet I'm sure they will come but you know huge tragedy for me is my editor doesn't like the book you know that's that's as bad as things get and so you know I mean I've had grandmother's pass away but in you know in her 90s so so come back to me you know in 20 years when I've lost my parents and we'll see otherwise go talk to other writers and see what they they do I don't really know if I have a suggestion for that a lot the same way that I write the fact that allomancy exists or right being a 16 year old girl when I've never been one being a writer's about observation about psychology and I can understand it I feel not having felt it myself because I can extrapolate you know what it would be to feel like I do and extrapolated to to other heights and you know I I can write hopefully an atheist who feels like an atheist though I'm not and that's a that's a skill of a writer but at the same time if you write something read something like my Jancy writes I think that she does it better because she's been there and I haven't so this is a skill of a writer I guess but yeah that's just how I am but and you know I've met others who are like this I think it's more of a guy thing because we don't have we don't have quite as many hormones changing our what's going in our mix month by month but you know my mom is actually a little bit more this way as well so I'd know I'm sure I'm not unique I'm sure there are plenty I'm sure there are others in this room they're like yeah that's kind of how I am too but yeah interviewing people helps a lot interviewing people with with certain different emotional states all right other questions ah yeah yeah it's going to depend on your personal psychology carrots work really well for me meaning I've got to get this done I know I've got to get it done if I work on this for you know this much time and I get this much done then I'll you know I'll go and buy myself a copy of Skyrim and I'll start playing you know something like that carrots actually are pretty good for me and so it depends I mean early in my career it was less carrots and more the stick meaning if I don't get this done I'm going to end up having to do a real job and I've described it before that jokingly I saw like some phantom cubicle chasing me through the streets and it's like I got to stay ahead of the game ago but um you know I was passionate about writing I still am I love writing I love that those moments when I'm in the book doing pretty the first draft and everything's coming together and I can't have those moments couldn't have those moments professionally unless I did this part and I didn't for many years and that's part of what took me thirteen books to get publishes what I didn't start doing this until later in my career so you just can't figure out how how you motivate yourself to do anything you don't like how do you motivate yourself to do your home teaching or whatever it is you know some people really like impeaching actually enjoy home teaching but whatever it is that you don't like doing how do you motivate yourself to do it doing revisions is my least favorite thing in the entire world there's nothing I mean I would I would much rather be doing anything else that reasonably I could be doing I'm sure I wouldn't like being tortured in North Korean prison more but you know anything else in my life I would rather be doing than that but it's part of the job and as bad parts of a job go it's not so bad at all because you know working for someone else that would be even worse letting someone else you know the the thing about writing on this the one of the intangible benefits so to speak one of the things that we don't talk about a lot that I just absolutely love is that my success is directly tied to how good a job I do the only one determining my future is me I'm not going to work really hard on a project coding you know and doing the best job of coding ever and then have the marketing team flub up so much that the product doesn't get released and I lose my job conversely I'm not going to you know do that and do this wonderful job and then have the the project leader be praised and get a raise if I do a poor job with my writing I will not make money because people won't buy my books if I do a good job with writing people will buy my books and I will continue to be able to do it and that's a really liberating feeling um it doesn't it's not even a feeling you can have at the beginning of your career because before you become a name in the field lots of things can mess up you know that aren't your fault but once you hit my level only I can mess up I'm not going to magically stop selling because they put a bad cover on my books whereas early on that could be something that can mess up your mess up your career a little bit I'm not going to you know those things aren't aren't a consideration anymore I have enough of a presence and so that's really awesome you know I my bonuses so to speak there are no bonuses it is every person who buys a book I get a cut of it and so of lots of people are buying them I make money and you know that's not the primary reason to be a writer but boy it's nice Oh we'll go to you next you're kind of hiding back there she already had one so we'll do her and then we'll come over here mm-hmm yes my wife was an English teacher so yeah yeah and you know what my wife she um it's she just does this instinctively she gives rah rah comments she gives some feedback but she mostly just rah-rahs and I think that's a good place for a spouse to be we've never talked about the fact that that's what she does but she just naturally started doing that I don't think you want your spouse to be the one usually giving you the really harsh feedback and criticism so so I'm glad that that's how she approaches it okay so this might be more efficient for you and I be silly but like we talked a lot about like Oh your editor might not like this or the writing group um I might not like this but do you ever worry like like the opposite like people like influencing people cuz like sometimes people really really like yeah yeah it's a little weird um in that way not as much because I feel that I try to write real characters like people realistic you know that when you look at them there's there's a depth room they're a person and they they may be struggling with something like that but anymore I don't think that that would have any more influence on someone than a friend doing it and this is just sort of the thing that we deal with in life there are certain other things that I wonder about you know one of which is at what point do we cross the line into glorifying violence that's a problem I think for all action-oriented storytelling and that's a that's a tough one and you know our society is too infatuated with violets I feel other ones you know there are people who really really really get into books and boy I appreciate them and I love that they do that and at the same time I think you know that William Shatner skit where he's like it's only you know have you guys seen this thing from Senate life where he gets up and people are asking questions and finally after a minute few minutes he says get a life people and I wouldn't say that but what he's getting at is it is just a story and at the end of the day I hope that reading my books is not becoming so fascinating to people that they're letting other things lapse in their lives we are too entertainment focused a society as well and good books I believe I'm a little bit biased have a good place in any person's healthy healthy entertainment regimen but you know if you're reading books eight hours a day I'm worried unless you know your your your a clause you know you're a fourteen-year-old bookworm then yeah you're probably all right because you know but you know at the same time you need someone pointing at each other at the same time you know that there are lots of good things that people should be doing and reading books is actually pretty low on that list and so I don't want to be feeding addictions to the point that it's distracting from other important things in people's lives so those are things I think about 10 or 12 thousand is on the long end you're probably okay but it is on the long end your target length for a chapter should be dependent on what you're trying to achieve for the chapter and if it has a good arc beginning middle and end then that's what you should be writing for there is no set chapter length there are a lot of people who will write you know Dan Brown writes three-page chapters or two-page chapters Terry Pratchett does not put chapters in most of his books they are one single long chapter with with viewpoint breaks and Robert Jordan liked five and six thousand word chapters that were big and meaty five and six thousand is considered pretty big and meaty so ten twelve thousand is really big but if it's got a bit beginning middle and end you know yeah yeah that's up yeah you should start practicing as you write I would suggest building beginning middle end to a scene and getting a sense for this is an end of a scene and letting a chapter break be there or at least a scene break what The Hunger Games is doing is what in the industry we call thriller plotting thriller plotting is and thrillers they want to use their chapters as a way to yank you through the story and they will do this by ending every chapter with some sort of hook a really powerful one and then they try to begin the next chapter with a powerful hook as well and so this is this comes down to what type of chapter writing you want to do we've talked about this a little bit but what they are doing is they're usually doing very short chapters and the chapters kind of do introduce a problem get there and then often break right here where where somewhere the first thing goes wrong normally where you know your your you know your first try fail cycle they try and it goes wrong or they open the door that they've been trying to get to and behind the door is you know it's the end of on lost season one right the light turns on John has been digging at this thing for a while and they can't get it open then they like bonks it and boom a light goes on it's it ends with a question you want to be better at this watch shows that use this type of plotting lost is a good one or read Hunger Games is good most thrillers will do this they want short bursts that make you turn the page and then they'll actually gain in wall a little bit in the chapter they'll they'll have you know a little bit action actually and then they'll Danny moi and then we'll ask another question and they'll cut like this so that you're never stopping it at the end of the day neva because the idea being if you stop the end of a date and wha then you have a little bit of a a sigh of relief and you can put the book down and so their philosophy is that you know if you're doing this that you're always cutting right here too them reading the book I don't do that I do it occasionally you'll notice but when I do it if you read my books watch four times I do this usually what I'm actually doing is I'm chopping in half a to Chapter sequence it's really one chapter that's a given scene and I feel that I'm going to use a little bit of this trick right here to pull you through that little sequence but usually what I'm doing is I'm having longer my chapters are usually three to four thousand words and what I'm doing is we're having a beginning middle and end and then I cut sometimes I'll cut right there will I have I'll have a little question or things like this but and then you know begging middle end and then I cut and this is because instead of thriller pacing I'm trying to do epic pacing which is you get a big meaty chunk that pulls you into the world and gives you this you know fulfilling sense of world building and it's long and it's kind of thick and by the end we let you take a break and relax and put the book down if you want to very different styles of storytelling I usually will let you put the book down I build into my books break points and that's partially because it works really well to read Hunger Games in one or two sittings way of kings does not work in one or two sittings and so I have the danger of overloading people whereas this where Hunger Games doesn't have that as much as much of a danger so is it on this topic yeah considering what I find that I do more like a pacing yeah since like it's a chunk of viewpoint it might be three chapters uh-huh yeah yeah yep yeah Robert Jordan did that in a lot of his books too and almost when you're doing that what what I've seen work best is what you're trying to do is you're almost like you're telling a short story in the world and you want to make sure those three chapters have their own kind of little mini three art three act format or something where it's like chapter one we're introducing the problem we're struggling with it we're working on some things chapter two we tried something it's not working at all what do we do now Chapter three okay we've worked through it we've pulled it out and a view point jump some people actually have them get to the end and then leave the cliffhanger and then jump to another group of characters I really think that can be bothersome but I've used it before too so these are all tools to use at different points in different times so how do you do that I mean if it is a good tool to learn how to use but the the thing to be aware of a thriller prop plotting is it gets tedious you feel like you can't put the book down but the same time that makes you frustrated with it because if the writer does it it feels like they're doing dirty tricks the example this is you know they build up Dan Brown does this in The Da Vinci Code he builds up this you know one of the characters Sophie saw some terrible thing um you know she learned she opened the door and saw some terrible thing on the other side and like a good dozen times so that the chapter it's like and then she she remembered that day when she opened the door and saw and then like the chapter ends and then she gets interrupted in her and their thing in the next chapter and doesn't tell you because something big happens or you know she opened the door and then and then you know the guy next to her got shot she's jumped back into this time or she's telling someone you know about this experience and then he gets shot or something and it's like you almost get the answer and every time you almost get the answer it builds up how cool that answer has to be and so it leads to the potential of ultimate when you get the answer it's um it's a prop it's problematic because the answer is not as cool as it's been built up to be that's one of the problems with thriller plotting people notice this about a lot about lost that the answers were nowhere near as cool as the questions were um and JJ Abrams is really good at this and so what you'll see JJ doing particularly that first season of Lost is whenever he gives an answer he gives a cooler question alongside it so when you have a mixed feeling of well that answer wasn't that cool but that question is awesome so obviously it's going to have the real answer um and so I will keep following this question so they just keep piling the questions on top of each other but it gets kind of it gets frustrating and annoying and it's why it works really well in a short book and really poorly in a long book but it's something you can study it's certainly a tool that you can use I thought I think JJ used it much better than Dan Brown did Dan Brown I got tired a bit very quickly with that book a bit 1/3 of the length that it was I feel that I would have enjoyed it much more than I did because having every chapter end with someone getting shot or an explosion or some you know personally this is just a hobby horse but if you are going to end a chapter with so they like to end a chapter with and they open the door and um and that's one way to make a reader have a question to keep reading I would rather have them open the door find something so awesome behind that door that it changes your view on the book and it's great and you've got your answer and the reason you keep reading is you want to find out the ramifications of that not you want to keep finding out what's behind the door but that's harder that it's much easier to do it the other way and I will say that doing it the way that you know what's behind the door is so awesome is actually really tough and I'm not sure that I'm even that great at it in all instances so all right yes don't really worry about it so I know like it doesn't really matter but right have some sort of process for making up names um I thought I went over this I I use I use usually linguistic cues I've taken some linguistics courses and so I will build a the linguistics base linguistics of of a region for instance I'll say okay I want to have lots of lots of s sounds for what those names give they're you know a neces can be almost a sinister thing and but it's very smooth and whatnot or you know I want to use lots of glottal stops and whatnot which to us you know usually means very kind of more of a blunt straightforward culture because of the way it is in our world and you'll notice the way we interact with English affects the way we view language for instance one thing to look at is English has a - huge influences Latinate and Germanic and the Germanic sounds tend to be in the Germanic words tend to be very more simple base words for us for whatever reason I'm sure the linguist can dig deep into this and then we'll usually have a Latin eight version that is more ornate and flowery and this might be because of the whole the whole Normandy thing Norman's thing where they came in and they were the upper class and so the the Latinate language that the French based language was what the upper crust used and so they had all their words for it and then the dramatic influence was what was of the people is that what you were going to say is probably probably that from back in the 1300s but for whatever reason you will have you know the Germanic way of saying something be give up and then the French the Latinate way being to retreat and one has a certain sense to us and one doesn't a lot of our a lot of our words and I'll get something's wrong but a lot of our Germanic words or things like food and you know work and you know all these words there's a good chance if it's it like a short word that means something very concrete it's Germanic in our language and if it's a concept it's usually Latin 8 and so you can build on that with the sounds you use in order to build your cultures that's one of the things and so linguistic tropes usually I like to pick some either a region of our world that I'm basing off of it depends on how translucent I want to be for instance and Mistborn I intentionally built an earth analog a meaning I wanted the culture and the this the technology to of a to have happened in basically earth style ways and so the culture is going to feel very familiar because it's it's you know Luth adele is based on 1800s on paris and you have the languages therefore you know the the the area where Ellen's from is just basically using german I went and I took German words and I looked for four morphemes and sounded cool to me and I built names out of them because of that a lot of the names for people from that region are actually words in German straw Ellen's father is a German word so is Elland I found out later on where as you know the central dominance is French and so you have names like then and demo and Renault and Kelsey a and things like this and so that's you know then there's Spanish out the other way and that was just because it was an earth analog for way of Kings I was not using an earth analog for most of my cultures and so instead I was building linguistic interesting linguistic concepts and so I built a lot of the names to be palindromes because of you know symmetry being holy and war breaker I did this with a something different I just felt like I liked the idea of the repeated consonant sounds it was interesting it's a linguistic it's a fun linguistic thing and so you end up with C brawn and Vivino and Caesarea and things like that as the names where they're just that they use the repeated Val consonant sounds just so there's a something tying them all together I'll usually write out a list of forbidden sounds that just don't have that language and maybe a couple of sounds we don't have in our language they use and so and I'll go from there but using earth analogs I do it a lot because it it allows us to reference what's you know some of the built in things from our world so one way to do this easily is to get a get a get a a big atlas and look for a lot of words and names another one is baby names from those countries and things like that so it really just depends I try to keep them subtle I try to keep them simple for instance the the terrace dialogue in Miss Bourne is really only three or four little rules for myself in their original language they would have they had a word that meant you I think to soften we do this a lot we don't have them as much in English except Canadian English uses a and things like this but a lot of languages have it Spanish has one doesn't they doesn't it what's that maybe yeah there you go very dad but I'm so the terrorist people will say at the end they'll often reverse that structure and just say I think instead of I think that there's you know they'll say it is this and this and this I think and that's one thing that they do I built them to have complex compound sentences more often than simple sentences and this is to kind of reflect their their nature as as a lot of scholars and things like this and just a couple of little linguistic rules like that to help me along and to not go overboard I think dialects too easy to go overboard on in elantra it was it was just a couple of words from the from the language that I threw it and Su lay in Colo and a couple of these things to just add some flavor to it so again I I suggest going being more subtle and there there are a few tricks that authors use a little too often I feel they still can work just fine but the no contractions thing a lot of authors you'll see in a lot of newer writers like well I'll make them use no contractions to be there their thing and that's okay but I would rather you say no contractions plus you know we have a very formal way of speaking so we always address someone by their name or their full name which is something Robert Jordan did yeah the the i'il always stressed people by their full name very rarely do they not use the full name because that's the one of the things he wanted for that culture and something like that is actually more distinctive it's also less a little more invisible and yet at the same time gives a great sense for the language and so if you want someone to be smart the other one that people use too often is using big words smart people don't actually use big words all that often this is a this is a false sort of sense that we've gotten from media that the smart one is using all these big words it doesn't happen go listen to smart people and that's not what they do smart people tend to be much better at making arguments they tend to be much more self-assured and they tend to use comp lat complex compound sentences and arrange their their arm sentence like I just did where it's organized very thoughtfully people who are not educated or not going to organize their thoughts thought thoughtfully in a structure they're going to kind of be more all over the place you can also talk about instinct versus learning and how people talk whether you know they're talking about their gut or whether they're referencing something they they know because you know they know somebody who talked about this once and things like that that is what how intelligent people talk listen how your professors talk listen how your friends talk because we are all educated and that's what we're really talking about is someone who's educated the other thing that really intelligent people do if they're hyper intelligent in our society if you talk to them pop culture references are just you know the the way they talk is back and forth really fast referencing obscure things they don't use big words they reference an episode of The Simpsons that they know another hyper-intelligent person will know and laugh at and everyone else will be like what or they'll make a really really witty pun we'll make them smile this is what it was like hanging out with Ken Jennings my roommate you know that guys know that right yeah my roommate when I lived with Ken and his brother Nathan and our pal Earl those three were all on college ball together well I can in inner aware and I don't think Nathan was with them but they were all they're all trivia buffs they're all hyper intelligent and a conversation between the three of them is not full of big words instead it's full of the right words it's full of lots of quick back and forth and it's full it's over your head because you don't know what they're referencing half the time so that's what hyper intelligent people get so anyway those are just a couple of think mistakes people make instead of having them you know use words like miasmic and and and you know these big long sentence with these you've seen if they do it they do in kids cartoons all the time well that's the smart one because he just used the word I don't know Sam

Channel: zmunk

Views: 14,129

Rating: 4.941606 out of 5

Keywords: brandon sanderson, creative writing, BYU, revisions, alpha readers, beta readers, thriller plotting, revising

Id: zBaocJrMXRU

Length: 70min 18sec (4218 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 30 2016