Sanderson 2012.3 - Point of View

slash info down slash pacing this one is a little bit harder to explain but you'll give feel for it as I talk about it all right really each two guys these guys minutes separates the amateurs from the pros in page number one all right now there's all sorts of other cool stuff that you should be doing on page number one starting with motion and that sort of thing and I'm probably gonna talk a little bit about that day but let's let zero in on this first one viewpoint and let's talk about the basics dewpoint intense first okay now our basic view points are the ones that you all know [Music] are the ones you all know right okay let's switch them off first person second person took that's a third person third mission these are your basic what are your basic tenses someone really say future you're just saying things has anyone read about these future pets okay I actually have seen a scurrying tom in second person future pencils you will go to the door and you'll answer it but yeah that's called writing student takes a master's degree writing class and present so let's talk about easiest tools the first thing to mention is that really honestly these two are pretty interchangeable now most of you in this room will have a preference for one of the two because of what you've read a lot of and it's probably going to be passed for most of you in this room a few of you it might be present so you wouldn't have a preference to present usually if you've been reading a lot of literary fiction you'll have a present tense bias if you've been reading a lot of a market fiction over the past tense bias that's just because that's kind of how they run literary fiction literary fiction is stuff that links the National Book Award what's good literary fiction that's being published nowadays I mean I always go back to things like like beloved great sadness and because it's too old but stuff has been published in the last thirty years yeah a lot of quiet very impressive too that's that's offensive yeah getting back to the topic more and more why here at present but those two are really interchangeable literary fiction is stuff that would win warts it's things that sell really well on the coasts um it's it's what a lot of the Korean writing classes will talk about there's some cool stuff that goes but if literary fiction does tend to focus on poetry the language in with new experience meaning we try to write something that that's never been written before and I've tried to you know to do it in an avant-garde sort of way or things like that I mean and who writes literary fiction is going to differ depending on you know who you talk to who they put in that set group but there's there's some cool stuff going on a literary fiction but market fiction is what we call the distinction is gender comes down to they they would talk about mark popular fiction as being plot focus while their character focus that's kind of a difficult thing to define because we are character focused - but we're character focused in a different way their character focused in this is a different unique weird experience in a character and we're focused on this is a relatable interesting person that you want to read about or you want to be and those are two very different sort of different different things that people try to attempt so president is much more commented it is becoming fairly prevalent way as well but the two are very interchangeable they really are you may not believe me on this but they really are the only times you notice the difference is if someone's switching back and forth or if you're used to one and you start a book that's the other but most of us after a little ways will this be is good so you don't have to worry about this your default in most John hrus that you'll be writing this class should be best if you have no good reason to not to do to do present just do past if you prefer present go ahead and do it does that make sense its present is not is is kind of looked down upon in market fiction because it there are so many people who read it and who repast and so your book can be jarring and look bad to a new reader so if you're writing epic fantasy I would strongly suggest this doing past if you're writing children so you can go either way and if you're writing something more science fiction you're more a little more avant-garde you can do present in no no bad nya Jim I mean speed of dark by Elizabeth moon switch between the two of these if you want to learn kind of have different fields of them are go look at speed of dark it's a great example of someone using past and present and switching back and forth in a very effective way okay so that shouldn't be much of a consideration for you what should be is where whether you're going to go first third or third let's talk about this one next because moving up the scale of things that you probably should default away from doing is omniscient omniscient is falling out of favor recently recently being the last 20 years of 30 years of fiction and particularly in in popular fiction sort of stuff we're talking about in this class it's fallen out of favor it is not completely gone there are still good books written in omniscient but most people have started defaulting to one of these two and so if you have no good reason for doing this don't do it what would be good reasons for doing omniscience first someone does does anyone not know there's between third limit in third omniscient okay great you're all in college and you've got that one that's good occasionally I have someone who doesn't know but that's that's great you all get a gummy but I'm not gonna throw them at you what would be a good reason to use the omniscient okay your characters a mind reader or God that would actually be a pretty strong reason to do on mission what's another good it would probably be technically third person limited they just know everything but look what why would you why would you use I'm okay you both get a gummy bear because those are both good comments what's that that's all right so what would be a good reason why would you ever want to use omniscient no because limited does that but limited let's the the definition for limited is one at a time in a scene okay omniscient changes in scene usually paragraph by paragraph and to make this Wow paragraph really strangely um to make this by the way you can have a you can have a gummy bear who was that was you yeh so to make this a little easy for you I kind of view omniscient as having two broad based sort of ways that it is done and one of them is body hopper and one of them is actually kind of a little bit more of a of a hidden narrator so body hopper is the true third-person omniscient this is where when you go into a scene paragraph by paragraph you are changing viewpoints and seeing everybody's thoughts when someone says something you then say what they are thinking and you could at any point in the narrative show what anyone is thinking at any time but dune does this really really effectively okay it's it's probably the poster child for third omniscient of this style because it was done very intentionally and it was right at the cusp of when people are moving to limited but but Herbert did omniscient and he he seemed very self-aware in in my reading of it of what he was doing with his omniscience so in a given pair a chapter you'll have a paragraph from you know from Paul's viewpoint and it'll show what he's thinking and then you'll have a paragraph from someone else's viewpoint and you're sure he'll show what they're thinking in thought sort of things I wonder what's going on Paul fought I wonder what's going on you know whatever his name is Patrick Stewart thought gurney yeah so yeah not necessarily but that's one of the reasons why our mission is so hard is because you start building this reader expectation that the reader is going to be able to see from everyone's viewpoint in perspective and you start not showing from certain people's perspective it breaks the illusion of the story and so it can be very destructive to not show everything when you're doing a body hopper thing like this for instance doing again is a great example of this when the person who's going to betray them walks onto the stage when it very quickly tells you in his head I'm planning to betray these people and I'm a bad guy which in limited would be like playing your hand outs like showing everyone you're ace and omniscient yeah you have to build your tension in a different way because you always know what the bad guys are up to and who the bad guys are you can't have someone secretly being you know against the team because it feels like you're cheating if you are does that make sense that's why this is such a challenge the other reason it's such a challenge is it gets very complicated very quickly and it can make the reader feel very at see the hidden narrator thing is a little is another type of omniscient another flavor of omniscient this is what something like The Hobbit is in if you read The Hobbit it feels like someone is sitting down and telling you a story and they will occasionally kind of dip into people's thoughts for you and tell you how they're feeling but it's almost like there's a camera and you aren't you're not going into people's thoughts and feelings that often except when the narrator starts talking about it this is any time a book says what he didn't know was you are an omniscient with a with a hidden narrator okay does that make sense that that's a really good indication of of that being an omniscient and Tolkien will do this Bilbo didn't know at the time but he will it feels like your grandfather sat down to tell you a story about this guy Bilbo and it can be a very effective are you telling method but again it's quite a challenge because of the fact that this one's challenges it is it takes a few steps back from the character and so it gives you a little it makes you have a little distance from the characters which can be a bad thing or a good thing but usually in today's present market it's viewed as a bad thing people really want engaging characters right up front this is particularly true in Wyatt where the voice of your protagonists and your first few pages is really gonna be what makes your book sink or swim okay so that's a rough explanation of omniscient most of you should not be writing omniscient if there's one or two of you in the class who are really emission junkies and you already know about all this stuff then go ahead and write in it if you aren't do some research first and find out what you want to do before you write omniscient that doesn't preclude you from making intentional viewpoint errors on occasion stylistically and picking third limited good example this is is The Wheel of Time if any of you have read it the first paragraph of every of chapter 1 of every book is an omniscient and it kind of zoom out and see the whole world and then it zooms into a perspective and the rest of the entire book is unlimited and you'll occasionally see devices like this done in books you'll find that people will begin each chapter with kind of a almost a wide shot and then a zoom in and then they pick their character or they'll end some chapters with a zoom out and those things are fine I'd stay away from them unless you you know you're unless they're really a device that you think really enhance your book just because starting off particularly I would try and learn one of these two styles or both of them really strongly before you move into stuff like that but there's nothing wrong with doing that so really it comes down to for most of you whether you want to write and third limited or whether you want to write in first and both of them have advantages and disadvantages let's talk about first and let's talk about third limited so first person you see a lot a lot a lot of first person in children's why do you see it so often in children's okay speak that louder okay great what else okay great back here it's simpler yes it is okay that's great you guys hit this one perfectly it's almost like you've been thinking about this already those are those are the some of the best answers I've gotten in this class when I throw that out to people so because they only have one character often because you can get to know a person quickly and effectively builds an attachment to one character very fast what else so it's simpler it's simpler these are all great things it also this it also gives away the protagonist list which is both a bad thing and a good thing most people going into most books are going to assume that protagonist is going to live and yes I do know there are first person books where the person dies at the end they're quirky gimmicks and yes some of them are kind of cool but that's that no longer the innovative awesome thing that you probably think it is because so many people do it that's not to say don't do it but don't do it because it's a gimmick do it because it fits a story you're trying to tell does that make sense um but anyway um a first-person narrator what it allows you to do it also and this is one that most people don't notice there's a huge benefit is it lets you cheat on several things first on having untrustworthy narrator it allows you to and the other thing is it allows you to treat on cheat on info dumps now we'll talk about info dumps in a second but a quick overview is one of the biggest challenges in a book particularly one that science fiction or fantasy it's going to have a very unique setting it's conveying all that information to a reader in a way that isn't boring really really challenging to do this correctly okay in fact I would say it's probably the hardest thing about science fiction and fantasy it's being able to do this okay you can she to the first person because you can make it interesting you can give this big long info dump but if it's in character and you're learning about who this person is you imagine you know your your your snarky fun character from a movie someone that you just laugh every time they open their mouth I imagine them giving an unfilled UMP about the world and then imagine dry third-person narrator giving an infant up about the world and you can immediately see how first-person can cheat and it works beautifully this is particularly important for children's because the adage of children's and remember children's is middle grade in ya2 the big adage of children's is faster do everything faster grab their attention faster and make the action faster conversations faster make the book go faster this is this is kind of one of the guiding creats in and contemporary Wyatt doesn't always hold but it is one of the the things that they look at and so since you can do more things with your prose in a first person any line can give a very good location of character in a pretty easy way it's actually in a lot of ways a much easier viewpoint - right and that's not doesn't doesn't mean that it's easier to master but it is starts off being easier so if you have only one character and particular for your writing in children's um this should probably be your default this is particularly true if you can come up with a really good voice for your character the voice of the character in children's is king making your character have a great voice will sell your book right out of the gate first page if they have a really awesome voice that book that editor is gonna keep reading so that's that's what first person can do for you there are also some other fun literary gimmicks yeah okay let's talk about that um there's a few things a few little um cool give me didn't I say gimmicks but tools really is what I should say you can do for first you can do epistolary you guys know it epistle areas because I didn't until I took classes so epistle area is where everything takes place in letters or blogs or something like that Dracula is an epistolary novel another famous one that some of you may read is social sorcery in Cecilia you see this in short stories fairly often you know something that is all blog posts the time-traveller one we talk about the time traveler one you can find it online it's awesome it's a short story written as f posts on a time travelers forum somebody finds it someone's gotta read it right it's you know like a new time travel shows up and then goes back and kills Hitler like the first thing and like everybody kills Hitler their first time and you know it's you can it's really pretty it's really cool some of it somebody google that and find it will put the URL up here but that's an epistolary story so i'm one of the cool things you can do first person sort of narrative but you can't you can't you know I mean it's basically only a first-person sort of thing um so you can do these kind of cool epistolary things you can do the cool tarek character reflects an actor reflects Wow I can't write today I never can write so that's not surprising anyone read sources are the the assassin's apprentice Robin hobb this book is written as if the main character years later is riding in for a first-person sort of journal about his early experiences which allows you to have two characters at once that are the same person he writes about his young self and interjects comments from his old self in a way that's pretty that's pretty awesome time traveler blog is what's called well that might not be it because this one's actually a short story that I think appeared NASA moms and stuff may not been as amaz yeah look up time traveler story everyone kills Hitler their first time yeah Pat Rothfuss is is doing a I'll get to him in a second he's doing something pretty wacky and cool on we'll get to in a second other other comments about this okay so yeah you can do the character reflects sort of story again you basically only have one character but you do this kind of cool balance between their older self and their younger self yeah oh yeah yeah yeah yeah in fact what you usually will see what these it's they'll usually what's called a frame device where some of the scenes are them older sitting there and writing and pausing and thinking about it and then when it goes into it it just goes into a straight first-person I woke in the morning completely refreshed and they remember things way too well anyone did anyone read the hundred thousand kingdoms one hundred thousand kingdoms is a brilliant Hugo nominated book this year that does this in a really kind of cool cool way there is a Content warning on it okay second half of the book particularly leave me read the first half the book and not have to worry about it but second half the book has some content warning issues but it's about a woman telling her story and in a very interesting way I'd suggest looking it up and reading the first couple chapters that figure out what's cool going on with this because both this and Rothfuss are in the last five years and so it might signify a trend on what Rothfuss does the name of the win which if you haven't read it if you are planning to write epic fantasy or heroic fantasy I strongly suggest you look at it because he uses basically what it is is a third-person you reverses it has a third-person frame device that's kind of a an epic fantasy couching around a first-person narrative what this this chronicler goes and finds this oldest hero that all these stories just hold about and convinces him to tell his life story and so then it jumps in the first person and occasionally they break back to them and the in listening to the story as he tells it and then it's a third person and jumps between you knows third person limited you have a couple different viewpoints and they'll jump back into the first-person narrative with him continuing his story which is a really cool framing device I absolutely love what's going on in both that and hundred thousand kingdoms you found it okay was it okay Wiki history by desmond Worzel wiki issue okay support com1 so really this will take you like five minutes to read it's hilarious and it does cool things with viewpoint so wiki history time oh sure I suppose I can write it on the board I suppose okay it's called wiki history yeah and what's the author's name desmond würzel w AR z ZL ze l okay so cool a really cool story and tor.com stories are all free to read so don't look that up that'll show you some fun stuff that you can do with kind of a new Voe epistolary type of story so anyway I suppose I should write these other ones up there for you 100,000 kingdoms and is anyone not read name of the wind okay okay probably the single most influential single most popular let's move on but single single biggest epic fantasy release of the two thousands I would say so what's that oh yeah it's in it I'd say single biggest see the thing about difference between me and office is I was a slow build and he was a huge explosion out the gate and so yeah he did this is definitely single the single biggest I think in everyone would probably agree on that the only thing that's giving him some run for his money are some of the later George are Martin books there's there they sell better and they're you know but the thing is I don't think that there is revolutionary because they're continuing the series whereas I would kind of point at his book being one of the most influential of the 90s 90s had a bunch the thing about it is epic fantasy had a big boom in the 90s and a big crash in the early 2000s so you didn't see a lot of them that your your big epic fantasy breakouts of the 2000s or a Rothfuss me Steven Erikson and I don't know if he count Jim Butcher his epic fantasy books are great but it was his his urban fantasy that really broke him out it's hard to find anybody else that really broke out big and none of us got nearly as big as the 90s authors did good kind Robin hobb what's that no no those were all 90s books fact they were all right around 95 but gameofthrones Wizard's First Rule and assassin's apprentice were all mid you know 95 96 and there was a there was I of the world in 90 so those all were super big smash releases in the 90s and early 2000s was kind of a kind of a dip for epic fantasy everyone was jumping to children's fantasy and to to urban fantasy where all the big breakouts happened in that same time period doesn't mean doesn't still sell it still does sell but but you have none of us have gotten as big as those people got in the 90s even our office yeah even me so anyway even me even I should say Steven Erikson who who really is a standout author from that period didn't get as big I think that epic fantasy is kind of rebounding a little bit now but there are some rough years in there um anyway okay so first person does some cool stuff that you can do so it's worth considering limitations the first person is walk over here limitation the first person the more characters so now I'm gonna put limitations and I'm just gonna write it easier more characters that's a limitation the more characters you add to a first-person narrative the tougher it gets for the reader distinguish who is who you see to decently often once you hit three since everyone is named eye it can get really tough to keep track of everyone that's not to say you can't do it but it isn't the standard yes yes you would change between chapters and I would strongly suggest if you are going to do it you name the chapter after the character that it is that's just your chapter name George Martin does this in third limited but I've seen it done in first-person quite often and it helps a lot yeah okay so it switches to epistolary interesting yeah yeah I'm gonna throw you both gummy bears ooh I even if it mailed that one that one wasn't so bad okay so the more you had the kind of more difficult it is and the the untrustworthy narrator is a thing it's a it's a cool advantage but it also kind of gives a little bit of a disadvantage where you're like are they telling the truth here and limited you're basically given the truth at all times except in people's thoughts and so that hole and trust where the narrator you also kind of have the personalities dominating which is a bet not a bad thing but if you have a bunch of different people all telling their stories you're gonna have to work really hard in your first person to distinguish each of them with their voice and because of that the voices of the characters are going to become the story and so it's hard to get across that that that epic feel it's hard to be epic and first-person and then of course there's the they lived discounting shenanigans they live and so some people don't like to use that because the the revelation it gives okay did I miss me you can't even think of other limitations yeah that's true if you don't like the voice that's a problem I had with Alcatraz if people do not like the voice of something like Alcatraz Magellan's book on the thirties then there's a horrible experience for them so yeah because that voice is so in-your-face and a lot of these first-person narratives so you know those most of those are pretty weak limitations it's a great forum that's why it's been so prevalent really when you're gonna choose between these you're not gonna be looking at the limitations you're gonna be looking at the advantages of each one and deciding if you want those advantage or not the biggest limitations the third the first person is that you don't get the advantages the third limited and the biggest disadvantage the third limit is you don't get the advantages of first persons that make sense let's talk about let's talk about third person limited over on this board here so third person limited third person limited you are in one person's head in a given scene and you do not show things that they cannot see okay you have to be careful of you players knock you out not to carry the reader out of the narrative which means that if I'm sitting here and you know getting a drink and someone enters behind me in third limited you not say John entered behind him you say the door opened and he turned to see who had entered it's a fairly big distinction in first person you say oh and it John came in because you are you're writing in past they know you know you know who it was though usually I would suggest just go ahead and say the door opens because it's an auditory clue it brings you more immersively into the scene it doesn't take any more words really but careful of errors third person though what it can really do is it can do a large cast better because you're being constantly reminded of the character's viewpoint in their name as you're writing whose viewpoint you're in it can really help you pull into a scene it sometimes is better for a scene and setting of the immediate nature so while you can't cheat on your info dumps I found that the third person that that first person you know if you can imagine imagine one of those um those gumshoe novels write the hard-boiled detective novels where they give you this awesome description of how it's raining at night and video you guys read these you know what these are like um you know it's like how the rain came outside it was so melancholy it felt like my soul was weeping you know that one's over but you know what I'm saying like you get this you know you get this all this this dumb shoe stuff woman you've got this great first-person narrator but each of those those thing are kind of pointing mimimi mimimi pay attention to me as the character as opposed to the actual scene and I found that that you could do a little bit better job in third limited setting a scene okay large cast is good you can give that epic scope and this is the best one for hiding things from the reader save perhaps the the third omniscient with the kind of storyteller who'll say he didn't know this but or there was something behind the door you'll find out eventually what it was but there was something horrible behind that door you know you you can you can do that in the present narrative but it feels it feels cheaper and this you can just not show a viewpoint that knows and so you can hide things and so it can it can work pretty well what am I missing here what other advantages are there who wants a green gummybear come up with an answer I'll give you advantages why do you guys like third limited in the books that you've read it in alright back there okay you feel more freedom with with you points one of the great things that you can do in third limited is basically impossible in most first persons is the throwaway viewpoint you see what this one person for a cup just a couple of pages and they're kind of interesting and they move the scene along but then they die or something like that or you know you use Tom Clancy you would do this sometimes and stuff you just you get the one scene from some random person's viewpoint and that's a cool thing that third limited can do much better than first what else yeah easier to off characters yeah right yeah well we'll talk about that that's that's that's item number two on our list there but yeah good okay okay yeah I think you could do that in first as well but the thing about third with such a larger cast is you can kind of show more shades of it um one thing about third who you got a red one one thing about third is I had it here [Music] you can oh man this was a good one too okay well let Jennifer talk you know you you can you can you can mix and unreliable in their own thoughts with a reliable yeah and so you can show inherent discord Matt's a great example this you know what he says so conflicts with what he thinks which conflicts with the actual narrative when the narrator is going that it's delightful because he yeah anyway um the thing I was gonna say is I feel like a third personally for me when I'm reading it I feel more like I can be that character and see through their eyes where when it's I it's not me it's someone talking to me I feel like I'm more immersed in the story a lot of times and this kinda goes back to that setting thing I think third is more immersive for a story whereas first is better at showing you a great character okay okay yeah showing a stupid character as yeah it's very different yeah okay okay yeah all right so well we'll do this one then we'll move on easier to perhaps I mean you can show some really great character flaws on first but of that but they can be really jarring when you do them and it might be easier to be a little more subtle with them in a third so anyway picking which one of these is going to be pretty fundamental to your book most of you are probably already picked writing in one of these too and I would suggest that you continue on with it but whatever you do let's talk about that second thing that I had in my list I'm gonna go back over to this one and this one is how you handle description meaning how the character sees the world we're going to transition the description but the second part of you playing this isn't me actually even number two here this is the second half of viewpoint moving toward it so these are the basic fundamentals what that editor is actually looking for or the reader unconsciously what they're looking for is when they pick up that first page that the character kind of jumps off the page at them by the way they see the world and Scott Westerfeld does a very good job of this and you were talking about it what's going to go on is you're going to try and make this character come to life by the simple things they do okay in first person this is actually easier because the way because their voice can saturate everything but I think though it's a little bit harder in third person when it works in third person it can be extremely majestically beautiful and it can really be like if you can master this editors are gonna love your stories and that is letting each line of description each each each thing that is known come filtered through the lens of the character's eyes all right now I'm gonna jump off of this one a little bit and talk about how to do description well and then we'll jump back on to it with some examples okay that might help you a little bit better so let's talk about description description which also kind of blends with my third point is one of those things that it's easy to overdo in a story and you want to avoid overdoing it the the thing you want to do with description is you want to learn somehow to be shorter meaning briefer which is basically the same world but word but brief means something different than short brief I think that word time means you retain the content that do it in fewer words so you want to be shorter slash briefer you want to be more concrete and you want to focus your descriptions on things that do more than one thing okay I'll get to it don't worry do you want and let's let's put on here and it's kind of a remind you're not really a point but more of a reminder we have five senses [Music] okay so these could basically be your guiding principles for description brevity concreteness making your prose do heavy lifting for you by doing more than one thing and remembering that you have multiple senses let's go down the list why is being shorter better because you don't lose them okay great answer what else you can get on to the next awesome thing cool whoo I was way off okay I'd nice it slipped that's one to go with okay keep some for being boring okay yeah okay more imagination hey I hit a shoulder that's great reduces your word count okay okay makes it more applicable because they're shorter okay yeah yeah let's let's talk about a few things here yeah I already thrown a bunch of yourself okay let's talk about a few things here these are all good things but to boil it down to be more brief shorter and sweeter is going to have more impact more impact is going to hold the reader to your story better holding the reader to your story better makes them continue going and makes them get more immersed in the story all right nothing is worse okay there are worse things but hybrid hyperbolically nothing is worse than a big boring paragraph at the beginning of a book okay you want to avoid this and there are a couple things we'll talk about here I'm gonna write these up mostly as a reminder to me we want to talk about learning Kurt we don't want to talk about the pyramid and distraction let's do with that learning curve learning curve is a challenge for us what I mean by learning curve is when you pick up a book you will have a learning curve no matter what you you'll have to learn new names you'll have to learn about characters you there's there things you're gonna have to learn and remember in order to keep track of this book in a fantasy or science fiction book our learning curve becomes more steep meaning there's much more to that people have to learn and so we have to throw it at them faster ok learning curve is a challenge but it's also an advantage most of us who read science fiction/fantasy are probably reading it because of in part the learning curve it's more engaging to us it's more imaginative because there's more going on we have to learn we like it we like that aspect but at the same time that learning curve creates a barrier of entry to the book because so many new names and things pile on top of a person that it can be very difficult to get going how you manage your learning curve is a skill that's going to show you as a show-off what you and as a writer can do and how you match it to your given genre it's going to be very important for instance why a and and middle grade you're gonna want to shoot for less of a learning curve a shallower learning curve okay usually the lower your learning curve the better however that said there are some famous books out there that that just expect you to deal with it anyone read Gardens of the Moon Steven Erikson how's the learning curve on that book it's brutal yeah he throws you right in the middle of things anytime you start a media res it's gonna raise your learning curve and media res means we're in the middle of a sequence like an action sequence or something like that that can be good because your payoff for that is is nice tension but things are going everywhere he just throws you in the middle of everything and then there's like flashbacks to and then there's like you know no description of how things work you just expected to pick it up as you go along and you know his learning curve is kind of like funk you know it's like run into this wall and scramble up to it okay then we'll be easy on you now it's rapping again I mean it is a really steep learning curve it's probably the steepest learning curve I've seen in a contemporary science fiction fantasy novel now shallower learning curves there are a lot of things you can do to shift this around one thing you can do is to try and move some of your own over here some of your descriptions to her being shorter and more concrete and trying to kind of shift as much of the the world building to kind of as we go along as possible don't put it all in your first paragraph or your first page or even your first chapter things that you don't need yet kind of shift them off and let us step into it so your learning curve doesn't you want it to okay other things that make learning curves less steep is the classic start in our rolling it sucked into the fantasy world why is it this make learning curve less steep you already know our world and so the fur you start off with there learn them only have to learn the character and then you add the world progressive but step by step but the fact that you already know our world helps with that a lot it allows you to ease into things this is one of the reasons why it's so prominent in middle grade is it really helps with the learning curve yes then you have a Watson character though the Watson character is a is a is a separate but kind of on top of the same thing on the Watson character is a character who doesn't know about what's going on and so the narrative has a good reason to explain it to them it's another great way just to ease your learning curve by having somebody if the characters confused you feel alright being confused does that make sense if the characters like I don't know what's happening but all I know is I need to get over there and stay away from this thing chasing me when you read the characters say that's you you're like alright I'm on board I know we need to get over there and not get eaten I can deal with that yeah yeah right yeah yeah it can be a real challenge to come up with and this is why the really really really different fantasy world or science fiction world can be extremely challenging to write because you can't even say it's as big as an orange because they don't have oranges and so this is one of the reasons why fantasy books I think also tend to only step it so far and how different the world is and this is this just depends on what type of storage what type of book you want to write yeah yeah it's one of the reasons why you have horses anyway and yeah a lot of the books are gonna find in world reasons that you do a lot of them like you'll find that they're up there far future Lost Colony you know like burn is far future Lost Colony which is why they're humans on this this planet that there really shouldn't be humans on that was much more common back in the day David Eddings did a lot of that too nowadays we don't do it as much I think there we found better ways to do it and we've kind of learned learning curve much better you don't see the big expository prologue anymore because people realize that a lot of people are just skipping them because they're boring that's that said most of the Pern ones was like three paragraphs and so it was a pretty good way to do it and you know I have a fondness for all the day-old David Eddings prologues but looking back I'm like man those don't let you start the story at all you'd have to cry you get this book you have to grind through this world building lesson and then I can start reading my story and you know people who grew up reading those then assume they do that but now the fiction has kind of literally learned to do it better ways and you don't see those happening nearly as often the editors are at are on the watch for people who can do it without doing that okay so how you do that without doing that comes in to your description okay you're going to want to make it short briefer and you're gonna want to focus it what you do is you want to dole out the information as it becomes strictly relevant okay instead of we begin our book you know people are chatting and then you're like big block of text to explain where they are you want to try and shrink this down to one line as part of the conversation if you can you can't always be you want to try and say what is the really relevant information for right now what can I move to later about this world building and is there a way I can structure and format my scene so that the rest of this can be chopped up into little chunks and be distributed throughout the first three chapters instead of putting it right there if you do this the editors are gonna you're gonna have a hard time getting the editors past the first page if you use anywhere in the first chapter you're gonna have a little bit of trouble that's not to say you can't do a couple of lines here and there but you want to try and move it to a couple of lines here and there and this is a really tough thing to do it in epic fantasy I will tell you right now that there's basically no getting away from doing it somewhat but if you can learn to do these kinds of things to kind of temper what's going on you'll find that you hold the reader's attention more and that's why we'll talk about the pyramid that's traps with the distraction right now on pyramid abstraction is something someone strapped me in when I was in grad school that I've absolutely fall in love with as a way of describing this and the pyramid abstraction says that if you layer you you build a big foundation of concrete language then as you add things that are more abstract and abstractions we'll talk about but as you add things they're more abstract you will hold the reader in the scene because you will feel they'll be like oh this is this character thinking about this and this is part of their experience rather than feeling wow now the narrator the writer has decided to give me all this information and so you your goal is like this concrete language is going to get its hooks in people and it's going to hold them there the issue is a lot of times these to fight with each other okay and I'll talk about why that is and so you're balancing factor is when you add concreteness you are often adding words if you can find a way to do it without adding words you should almost always absolutely do it because it's going to make your writing that more much more evocative that much more powerful and it's going to help with your foundation of keeping people in the scene without the abstractions popping them out let's talk about what an abstraction and and what something concrete is those you have taken the class you sit this one out all right I'm going to list some things at you and I want you to tell me whether they how concrete on scale this is absolutely concrete and this is absolutely abstract all right we'll start with love how concrete is the word a dog yeah how many how many of you in here thought of the same thing when I said a dog probably almost everyone if you imagine a different dog okay and in a lot of ways we talked about love almost all of you probably imagine the exact same thing so in some sort of description of it you could say that the word a dog and the word love that dog is the abstract one and love is the concrete one not necessarily because I honestly think that both of them are kind of a little bit in the middle but love is probably going to be a little higher because you actually have to try to describe what love feels like you're going to have to go into abstract language which is that which is the issue describing what a dog is is actually pretty easy to pull it down on the scale of concrete it's how can we do this color size yeah we can start describing the dog and each word we add on top of this word word word is gonna pull it down can you see why short brief brevity and concreteness therefore sometimes fight with each other it's really easy to get very concrete with lots of words your gullet then as a writer is to come up with fewer words the right words in order to describe this dog in a way that cements someone into the scene and does more than one thing you want to describe this dog in a way that sets tone that maybe says something about the characters seeing the dog and that also makes it concrete this is what I talked about by doing more than one thing if you can come up with a sentence that describes that dog that does all three of these things then even though you're adding words because you're making this one sentence do so much heavy lifting you are pulling it down on this scale concreteness you are giving us information about the character setting the tone and maybe even you can often give us some setting in this one sentence description of a dog that'll tell us to do some your info-dump work by setting I mean you know some of your some of your world building and your description in the dog so this is what we're looking to do now people ask me I got this question on Twitter yesterday how do I build my vocabulary this is a scary question for a writing professor why is that so scary for writing professor yeah exactly exactly people who are reading or last that question almost invariably we are saying I want to go memorize longer cool there works that is the wrong way to approach description okay what you want to be able to do is learn the right word and having a slightly larger vocabulary will help you find that right word but really want to choose a precise word for instance let's talk about precision let's say a wooden bed all right how can you make without adding any words this they the phrase wouldn't better into something more concrete and okay okay I would even say a log bed does a better job why because log bed if you've got a log bed in there it's starting to do some of this now we're at a lodge or something right now we you know you've got you've got you've expanded your vocabulary into words that you already know that's the sort of way you should be looking to use your thesaurus bringing something down step on the UM on the the the pyramid abstraction by changing one word this is what makes description work it depends if it really is just the bed then it should just be a bed now if you're walking to this room and you can find something to describe other than the bed that's going to give a better location at home character or setting then perhaps that's the thing to describe in step one thing to keep in mind the description is when we're talking about you know this big blog block attacks let's say you know there's there too since people tend to put in big long walk to tax one is big description of the subsetting they walk in the room and you want to give us this huge enormous description of of this awesome room okay that gets old really fast the other reason they do it is to give a whole bunch of world-building he was a knight of this order who believed in these fundamentals in you know bone and so speaking that's why the gods fell and now yeah I mean that that's the other reason that we get these big long paragraphs well the first one the description you can actually if you can do some of these heavy lifting sentences which we'll talk about we'll try it we'll try and build one here but if you do some of these heavy lifting sentences then you can shrink that whole paragraph down by giving us the tone when you say that there's a four-post bed in a room we're setting the rest of the scenery you often don't you know if you can say it you describe this bed and say you know it was it was trimmed with lace it was four posts and it was made of fine oak you can pretty much start to extrapolate the rest of that room it's a rich lavish room you don't have to then go on and tell us how rich and lavish this room is if you can describe one thing you know if you walk in the door and sitting right here is it pure gold wine carafe is that way you say that yeah I'm wine pitcher there's a pure gold wine pitcher sitting on a marble stand with fine you know fine mahogany table trim you can kind of fill in the rest of the scene this you know you know what type of house you're in whereas instead if you walk in the door and you see bolt holes in the window and the light is flickering and you describe those two things and everyone's gonna you're gonna have a different view of this room and so it's not going all the way down here but it's gonna be down far enough that for most cases your mood has been set what type of house you it is building it is II has been set and so you can give a couple of these really concrete sentences these really concrete descriptions and set your tone tone in your mood and your character so let's talk about the dog let's let's try and do now this is going to add words okay so we're gonna add words we are we're at a fantasy book walking along and we see a dog how can we describe this dog what are some of the things we can do to make it more concrete into trying to vote character or a vote setting okay having the dog be injured kind of sets a mood doesn't it it's whimpering have you described as a dog that had not yet been caught and eaten what does that say yeah if it's in a city or something you know that says say something right a dog that is not yet been captured me I mean you probably do not want to say a breed in the fantasy novel in the science fiction novel you can say the breed because it'll be and make it an earth breed so you can then do this whole thing but sometimes you can't move it you know into the into the into the breed without kind of breaking yeah well we're gonna say what's that yeah Golders you're mentioning the breed can can do that but you can say things like call the Wolfhound or call it a bird dog or some of these things that usually in fantasy you you want to try and stay away when you can't from using the turns that overtly come from our world the thing is almost all the terms do secretly and so you're gonna have decide where your balance is here but you know calling something an ottoman instead of a footstool it's probably a bad idea in a fantasy book simply because the ottoman empire didn't exist and a lot of people know the word ottoman as relating to the Ottoman Empire that said you can make an argument for saying well the whole book is in translation anyway and so the person who translated English is called an ottoman because that's what we do you know I mean but you gonna have to watch this balance so how it's can we describe this dog I couldn't even vote character in our description of this dog oh it's that okay a sneer yes gnarling dog I had to not vote the character of the person who's seen the dog okay yeah mongrel you use the word mongrel and that does something different or you know a disgusting dog or you know a cute dog can give you how else the community can we can we think of way to evoke some of our our world building with this what's that yeah a fine hunting count if your character walks along we're back on the character his character walks alone says wow that looks like a really well bred trade fine hunting hound who would lose one of those and that sentence suddenly we're talking about our character as they you know they know about hunting or things like this okay looks like a cow what do you mean okay okay okay okay yeah okay yeah it's got armor on if there's some armor I know that could be if it's appropriate your world and you can pass a war dog that says so much you know yeah this is what we're looking to do with your descriptions alright we don't have a lot of time left on this but you want to be doing these things now the other thing to keep in mind is the the multiple senses the multiple senses do a lot of work bringing us down here because they happen so infrequently in a lot of writing descriptions and so if the dog is whimpering and they catch a whiff of how terrible it smells you know that the wet hair smell then that is going to be several times more concrete than the equal description used as is just a viewed a site description whatever you call it yeah if it looked injured looked wet if you smell it being wet that's going to do more heavy lifting than saying it looked wet okay and so these things what these things are doing is you give us a couple of these sentences these really powerfully descriptive sentences you toss away the rest of this descriptive paragraph and then you keep on going with your dialogue and in between in your dialogue you can start throwing in more and more of the set the sort of world-building things that you wanted because you've really cemented people into this world with the whole concept of pyramid distraction which really doesn't work people are in there they're with you they're following along they're like yeah this world is cool and oh that little tidbit is awesome make them relevant save the Unreal relevant ones for later but start working them into the dialogue or descriptions and you'll start suddenly start seeing you know if you imagine you've got three sentences for a description we'll get to you and you're going to do these three sentences and the first one is this wonderfully you know descriptive concrete thing that evokes something about the character here and then after it you mentioned something about setting you know it had been years since he'd been hunting with his father you know hunting the you know the the drakes that that clustered around the cliffs outside the town you know some sort of world building thing that's basically purely world building setting info-dump sentence but if it relates to kind of this you know concrete thing and then you meetings followed up with some sort of more concrete thing you can see how counting that in there keeps the reader in build your world and does it in a really engaging way as opposed to two lines of dialogue and then eight sentences of reminiscing about the characters past with their father might do you know what I'm saying here hopefully this is getting across to you and this is the the second big thing kind of mixed with the third thing that those editors are gonna look for in your first page they're gonna look for you doing this kind of heavy lifting with them with your sentences you're they're gonna be looking for concrete language they're gonna be looking for it to a vote character and we didn't get to the character part of it very much yet and we'll do that but we do have to stop for writing groups but the idea that you look through the lenses of the characters eyes and as was mentioned here I'll just throw this out here and then we'll talk about it more next week you know the character who has been who is a soldier might notice the fortifications of the town or is the character who is a scholar might notice you know the that those fortifications were built upon old fortifications from the you know this culture that fell long ago and noticing those two sentences one says wow they've those fortifications could hold off and repel you know one man could repel Ted with the other person saying wow those fortifications are built on the ruins of this ancient civilization suddenly you've done a description both of get across there's a walled city but one gives you the historian character and one gives you the soldier character and they when you kind of move your descriptions that way even in a third person limited you can get some of that first-person power of voice just in how they see things

Channel: zmunk

Views: 18,788

Rating: 4.9647059 out of 5

Keywords: brandon sanderson, BYU, creative writing, viewpoint, omniscient narration, first person viewpoint, third person viewpoint, learning curve, pyramid of abstraction

Id: 7Js_mUwRMJM

Length: 69min 21sec (4161 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 19 2016