Sanderson 2013.15 - Questions

all right before we launch into things let's talk about the finals who has a final for me today to turn in yeah I've raised your hands I want to see how many nice Wow you guys over in this quadrant or so on the ball you're are you guys are the the group the why a group are you why a group to so wow you guys that's that three out of the five people in your in your group that are turning it in already six all of you are turning it in three of the six okay well that's cool um was there anyone else who was turning it in okay you've still got a little bit of time but but time is running out so come talk to me at the after class if you have how many let's see is anyone more than ten thousand away from their goal you are alright if you're more than ten thousand away from your goal come talk to me after class all right so this was your day to throw questions at me at the your last chance to have me until next year if you come and take that class what things have we not covered that you want to hear me talk about yes yes depends on that's a great question depends on your focus if you are really interested in a particular time period taking a historic history class on that time period can be very helpful a lot of the basic humanities type stuff you know history of philosophy history of this history of art in this you'd be surprised at how useful that will be particularly for a fantasy writer science fiction getting the astrophysics classes if you can get into them I should probably be focusing on English classes since you know that's what most of you can get into easily I'll just I'll just mention you know Stephen King says the thing the last thing you should do if you want to be a writer is major in writing or major in English that's because taking courses that give you things to write about it can feel your imagination and can help you to find an area of expertise as I mentioned before most writers I've known have started writing what they read which is a great place to start but have then strayed into finding more of a niche for themselves both Jancy and Dan people got published that I know started in epic fantasy because that's what everyone reads right but then Dan found a better voice in in in teen horror and Chauncey found a better voice in mainstream teen with what's a tional some fantastical elements and so taking a bunch of classes and writing a bunch of different things to explore really where your interests are in your talents lie could be very helpful to you so you know I really wish I tried hard when I was an undergraduate to get that to get them to let me have the major in university studies that they give to like people who come back after you know not having gone to school for you know 20 years and they're like well we'll just give you any degree just get this number of credits they wouldn't give it to me but I always thought that would be the best one for a writer is you know an open major that lets you take upper-level courses after you know you've got the prerequisites and a multitude of different things and kind of craft your own hybrid writing classes history classes science glasses major they don't really like that that it may be more open to doing that now I've heard but but yeah so there you are all right Oh we'll get back to you okay question here and then we'll jump my question was when we were talking about publishing an agent and you talked about approaching people thank you okay you talked about approaching people at conferences uh-huh and it was it was all very very general and who maybe it is only general but is it possible to go into more specific why I told you with conventions right right the specifics depend on your writing style your personality style and and your goals some people going to these club conventions you'll be horribly awkward and unsettling to them to walk up to somebody an editor and start talking to them I understand this should probably do it anyway but that person's goals may be different from your goals you are a somewhat gregarious bold person I get the the sense that we'll have no problem walking up to someone you don't know and in launching a conversation your goals will be different and that's totally fine think about what you want to accomplish you're gonna spend 500 bucks to go to this conference probably which is a pretty penny for a lot of people in undergraduate situation what do you what do you want from that $500 what is your goal is your goal to walk out with a list of business cards that's a that's you know that's a a a high aspiration I mean it's what I wanted to do but it's it's tough that means talking to a lot of editors finding out who they all are going and ask them you know in trying to get them to say yes go ahead and submit something to me and then set asking for their card or something like that or is your goal instead to go become more comfortable in the situation talk to one editor and take notes on the rest so that when you submit to them your query your query letters you can include you know I saw you here and you said this thing that I thought was really interest and helpful to me as a writer so I want to thank you for that and I thought you might appreciate you might be interested in looking at one of my pieces that's a different goal and both are legitimate you know maybe what what you want to do is go be an editor which is what Peter my assistant wanted to do so your goals are completely different so it's it's hard for me to say specifically what to do generally though like I said don't be threatening don't walk up with a manuscript I get them talking about themselves in the works that they enjoy it's basic interpersonal stuff right imagine it as if you're if you're trying to flirt with somebody you get them talking about themselves not about you and that sort of stuff and at the end you ask for their number you give them they're at yours I don't know how many of you are any good at that I was pretty dreadful at it but but I got better you know you use those same sort of things in order to talk to an editor know if you want to try and track down agents agents are much harder to find unless you go to a conference that has specific pitch sessions agents can be much harder to find so you're gonna have to know what they look like they probably won't be wearing badges a lot of the agents don't so finding them can be tough they'll probably be in the bar that's another thing you know how comfortable are you wandering into the bar at the hotel ordering a sprite and trying to talk to the people there that I did that my very first time very one of these things it was the most awkward thing I had ever done but I walked out of there with the business card of Jim Mintz editor at aarhus now when the primary was at Bain after having a lovely conversation with him about writing and all these things well he you know downed three drinks and I sipped at my sprite which I don't even really like so there you go yeah so when you think about personal communication and yes I'm a member of a human being how are you able to get them to talk about themselves Andy don't be memorable don't be memorable they're not gonna remember you your goal is to be able to write in your that's the great question though to write in your cover letter I met you here and you gave me your business card and they will think oh okay one of the people that I gave my business card to at this convention you do not need to be memorable if you are the the best way to be memorable if you want to be is at the end the conversation you're going to say hey I have a book I'd like to submit to you would it be all right if I if I sent you you know I sent you what I'm working on and they say sure what's it about that's your chance to be memorable that's when you give them if your pot capable of it a pitch that knocks them off their feet that you can then put in the letter again and they say wow that I remember that pitch that pitch was awesome the others remember the pitches they won't remember you and so if you've got a knock their socks off pitch which is so hard to do we talked about how to do that it's so hard to do but if you've got one that's how you make a memoral and when they ask they say yes I don't know if I mentioned this before send it to them the next day if it's by email send it to him that night if it's by it via snail mail which most of them are not doing anymore you go ahead and you use snail mail you know you overnight it you don't you pay you've just spent 500 bucks to go to convention you pay the extra 20 bucks to overnight it to them and you go ahead and you write requested material on the front because they asked for it yes you can submit that to me is them asking to see your your submission you can even put it in your subject line of your email requested information submission from this and then you get your query letter in that so yeah a great pitch probably is the way to be memorable all right you had a question right here okay go for it it's actually okay sweet did you kill anything and eat it but you tried okay well done Wow excellent that's that is very impressive and I can see how that would be extraordinarily helpful I should probably take that class all my people live in cities though that's I write about cities alright we're gonna go back here and then over here you mentioned earlier when you've talked a lot about getting those rejections where they're like if you just do this yeah how do you handle that like oh good question editor's are agents that I know this is isn't a hundred percent but generally my experience has been that they know consciously if they write in a cover letter if it had been more like this or if it had been you know I might it it might have worked for me they will if they are writing a personal rejection letter they liked your piece okay if you get anything other than the this doesn't meet our needs at the time the characters were did interesting things but we're not engaging them you know you can tell if it they will try to mention like the character's name or something like that if they're writing a personal even one line of that is generally an invitation to rewrite and resubmit unless they specifically say something in the letter that indicates it's not like you know they will sometimes say this didn't catch me Plus this book just isn't right for me if they say that don't submit it again to them but I was just looking over when my old ones were the were and so were today's good editor had said you know I felt that the beginning was too slow on this there were some really interesting concepts you know your your writing is very engaging but the story was just too slow that was one where I felt as an invitation to reach and indeed it was talking to her later because I didn't submit it and she still rejected it but asking her later I'm like did you want that she's like yeah I don't put that in a conce unless it's a it's a backdoor invitation for you to resubmit they don't say edit resubmit this because if they do then that's kind of making a promise to you that they don't want to make if they do say resubmit it then they're making more of a promise and that's an even better rejection letter so so if they suggest changes make them and submit it again don't keep doing that forever but go ahead and doing that once or twice is is legit okay and you know you'll know you're getting close if you start getting rejection letters like that if you if you can consistently get a personalized rejection with suggestions on what to do that means you're right on the cusp and it might mean that you just need to learn a couple more things about writing or it might mean that you just haven't found the right editor yet okay other questions Wow you know everything yeah oh you had one well I just was a classic honest with you okay hospitais for me I um II like the 322 which is modern American usage and I thought it's helpful for but you know how to write characters differently okay right yeah good good suggestion so as a CS major I must ask this last class you mentioned that programming is about the worst dog or a potential writer because it exits after the same muscles what muscles are well yeah you think it muscles is metaphorical there you might now this just this may not nothing nothing holds on to present-- true I'm eating my sucker by the way so neener neener you guys eat in my class I let you sell Plus this has been sit in my box for eight months feeling forlorn the this may not hold for you most programmers I know like most writers they can write creative stuff for a certain amount of time and then they feel mentally exhausted and have trouble writing further that day and your personal threshold may be different we use them you have used the metaphor of the well you draw the water out and then if when you if you wait the water actually rises back in his ass have asked the seep through from the water table the same thing happens to a lot of people I know hoop code they spend all day doing the coding it's a creative endeavor that is very similar to writing and they get home and find themselves mentally taxed and fatigued that's why most programmers I know who want to write suggest writing in the morning before you go to work but but yeah I'm just saying passing along information that other programmers I know and basically the invitation to take me five your graffiti writer mm-hmm that's not to say you can't do it Eric James stone is a programmer and a Nebula Award winning writer so it can happen but but just be won't be forewarned that that's that's a potential issue you may have to do your writing on Saturdays mm-hmm we talk very briefly once about writing under assumed names do you have anything more to say about that I mean obviously you don't yeah pseudonyms Dave Wolverton picked his pseudonym from where the book would be placed on the majority of bookshelves he said W is at the bottom I want to be at eye level he shares a study where you know percentage of people who are more likely to buy their favorite soup if it's you know if it's down three rows they're more likely to buy the one they don't like as much because it's right there in front of them I don't know how true a lot of these studies are but but he wanted to be placed on the bookstore shelves in a certain place so if you're picking a pseudonym don't pick a Z I would just suggest not picking a Z I don't think it is this big a deal now as it might have once been and I don't even know how big a deal it was back then I'm an S and I've done just fine Rothfuss has done just fine recently but but you know it's it's worth considering if you're going to pick a pseudonym a lot of the people who pick pseudonyms generally pick one bland name and one interesting name meaning you'll have you'll be like Jack or Jim or John and then interesting last name or or vice versa so that the name isn't too weird sounding but also has something memorable about it again I don't know how legit that is but you know it's it's advice I've heard yeah [Music] it's it's I mean if you work really hard to keep the secret and you have a good reason to it can be kept for a few years but the fact that you know I mean basically nobody can do it and nobody really wants to if you're new right there's no reason to it I mean the reason to is to separate your writing life from your real life but they'll find out who you are if they really want to too many people know generally so you could just be a permanent like Thomas Pynchon yeah if I ever write and publish something I can be very detrimental to my academic life yeah and that's a good reason to to use a pseudonym a lot of people in academia do that specifically it's more than you know just you don't want people googling you who want to find your novels and finding your boring academic treatise they're gonna find your home address if they want it there's did you can't stop them from finding your home address just deal with that if someone wants to murder you it's I mean you you you can't I mean if you google me you can find it it's like I own a business small business owner it's a matter of public record you can't hide it not on the internet not from the internet era I mean Harriet tried very hard to hide the location of Robert Jordans grave and it's all over the internet and that's his grave which you would think would be a pretty hard thing to find if you you know it's not like it's registered anywhere but everybody knows so yeah the internet detectives are really good maybe you're better than them but I think you just deal with these sorts of things yeah academic you don't want people finding your boring academic treatise if they're looking for your novels and vice versa if you are looking to get tenure you don't want them to Google you and just find all of your novels which you should be upfront that you're writing them I would think but you know you want your careers in that case probably to be separate enough that people can find what they want to find I yeah I wouldn't I wouldn't hide from your department administration what you're that you write novels don't be ashamed of it but separating the two lives is a legit thing to do particularly because you write generally write so much in academia the the division works as a as an advantage on both sides if you do pick a pseudonym one thing to do Dave suggested this is pick the same first name also he's David Farland and Dave Wolverton because then when someone calls asking for Dave it doesn't matter you know people always know what to call him Robin hobb no one knows what to call Robin hobb right because everyone knows she's Megan Lindholm but they also know that that's a pseudonym from like and so it's like what name does she actually go by nobody knows she answers to them all as I understand but you know it's always weird to be like hi Robin Megan / other person you know but it's worked very well for her because she wanted an androgynous first name because she was writing first-person male perspective and she wanted the book to be you know people who pick it up not know if a man or a woman wrote it yep it is which is why we see things like JK Rowling so I don't know how strong the conventional wisdom is on that but the conventional wisdom is that a an androgynous first name is helpful for younger readers again I don't know how big a deal it is but Hunger Games what was her name Suzanne yeah she did just fine as Suzanne Collins and boys read a lot of those books so alright other questions there was something over here I thought yeah that's a matter of choice on your part half the author's say yes half say no if they are the the argument for let's get let's do the argument for the argument for is that if you're in two different genres and they sell to two distinctly different groups of people but have different sales expectations the one can influence the other Dave explained it this way fantasy outsell science fiction he did not want the buyers looking at his last book and saying what did his last book sell and basing his fantasy orders on that the counter-argument is the buyers are usually usually more savvy than that and know that a certain series or genre sell different expectations and the sales force should be able to handle that that's the should Dave didn't want to take chances he changed his name when he launched into fantasy because he felt that that division would help his fantasy novels to do better because the expectations and what a science fiction book sells versus what the expectation is what a fantasy book sells Plus launching a brand new name kind of clears away any expectations and so they don't know what to expect particularly in the first book where you can kind of hide who it is and so they can sell it as you know this brand new cool epic fantasy series was which is what happens Robin hobb - I mean they all knew who she was but the idea is you could present it to the public is someone brand-new it was a blank slate the sales were not capped and there's sales are never capped but there's this sense that if you know what a author has been selling you probably know what they're going to sell generally and so that's a reason for it people said do the same things which switching between yaa and an adult having two names I talked about this with my editors an agent a my editor my agent and both of them thought it was ludicrous they said the buyers are better than that they know that certain genres outsell oh there's genres it's all about what the sales team was able to and you lose the cross promotion that of people picking up your children's books because you're because it like your notebooks or vice versa if they thought it was ludicrous that you that I would change have a different pseudonym other people think it's there's a very good reason for it so yeah so my childhood was shaking recently when I discovered the KA Applegate into the anymore series yes it's actually a group of five separate writers always at the same pseudonym yeah how calling is that how does somebody get into that you can pick the books that that's for they that style of book is very different it's you almost always middle grade or the right before middle grade age it is the long series Hardy Boys were like this Sweet Valley High anything that's like a an established brand across the long period like that is going to be like that these days it happens a little bit less than it did just because those are kind of out of vogue and they have this new big thing where it's like the 13 clues right was that was called or the 70 39 clues those each had a different author right and they were just upfront about it that's kind of the popular thing now but what's going on with these types of series is often they are there the boy bands of the writing world right do you know the difference in your boy boy band is we are going to we are going to develop this in-house rather than going out and looking for a specific talent and promoting it we're like well we think the market needs this right now in house the editorial team gets together maybe with one of their big authors and they brainstorm something they come up with some to come up with a a Bible for it so to speak is what they call it and then they hire out a bunch of authors to write it and it's an in-house production instead of a Talent Search and those sort of things happen you almost every author who works on things like that gets the job by having published other books and and then being hired on to do one of these two exclus the exposure and things like that animorphs and things like that of the old school that doesn't happen as much anymore but those sorts of things you could also just get hired on they would go to like grad programs in MFA's and say who wants to write one of these will pay you 15 grand apply send us an outline and do it there's a great essay online I think it's on salon or something like this if you google you know confessions of a Sweet Valley High author or something like that someone try and google it find it it's a fantastic essay about someone who wrote the Sweet Valley High just want the twins right yeah the one one of the one of the ghost writers on that and she talked through how she got hired and the process of doing it and that might be give you more help because I've never done it but yeah wildcards is its own special beast that's George one of George RR Martin's babies and wild cards I I you would have to ask him if it was an in-house thing I think like thieves world was pitched this way and wild cards probably was but nowadays wild cards is convinced George are Martin that you can do it and you know you get to join his club and be in the wild cards it's a it's a very different thing from what it once was but I think they tried some of those in the 90s Steve's world and wild cards and they may be the same thing they might be something different though yeah I yeah yep okay he's anyone have anything related to this topic okay go for it um so that's someone who is never with you right see that much okay what fantasy books would recommend the most oh okay what do you write why'd you take this class okay all right good answer that it's kind of like a like near publisher post-apocalyptic okay okay let's go through let's I'll just throw up these are not going to be the definitive list okay but I'll take like ten minutes here and we'll go through some of the lines of fantasy and and where they came from okay a little bit of a history lesson fantasy family tree fantasy and my this is this is all according to Professor Sanderson who's not actually a professor I'm an instructor but I call myself professor this is all according to me others disagree with me on this and we have wonderful varied conversations about these kinds of things but I view three basic lines in fantasy so we've got well there's more than that but first there's the there's the children's the children's line there's the epic line there's the heroic line and then we can get into a couple of her things like the weird ie I before he es especially now that one's always gets me yeah weird there's the weird and then you've kind of got all the lines in science fiction which I'm not as completely on but you asked about fantasy alright so so these are kind of like traditions and they intermix a whole lot okay epic is basically we look at talking as as kind of the start of the epic line he really was there are lots of great authors before him but he was the kind of one that brought this all together and started dabbling in secondary world epic is usually secondary world now you can make an argument and I had a big argument well discussion wasn't argument we're agreeing that Tolkien isn't secondary world he said he was writing Lord of the Rings as a mythology for England because England didn't have its own mythology but but really before the this era the modern era you didn't have secondary do you know what I mean by secondary world no connections dearth no connections earth the heroic line is kind of the the Conan what's-his-name Howard the Howard and the Tarzan Burroughs Burroughs guy ugh the Howard Burroughs line these all had a connection earth Conan's prehistory of are things like this the children's line but you can where you pick the start of this is pretty ambiguous some people put Lewis Carroll and through the looking-glass some people put Narnia move it up a little bit more but you this is basically the Narnia verses what's that Lewis and Lewis oh that's a good way to put it the Lewis and Lewis except for the fact that they weren't the first to do it because there's there's other children's whimsical fairytale children's stories that share a lot of things even before Alice in Wonderland was written but this is kind of that tradition young child from our world gets sucked into a fantasy world okay go from our world to fantasy this is starts fantasy and fate of the world this is one or a small number of heroic protagonists usually with a sword okay so there's this and then you've got the weird right you've got the the weird which is a little bit harder I mean this is basically what we well you might think of as horror except Horrors been co-opted by a lot of things this is this is your Lovecraft and the people before Lovecraft where you can kind of point at Mary Shelley and say maybe Mary was the first one to do this what is you know what is Frankenstein really is a science fiction novel is a weird novel as a fantasy novel yap oh yeah Poe is in here pose in here these are this is this is your Twilight Zone sort of stuff that's that's fantastical but you can't really pin down if this is science fiction or if it's fantasy and think or things like that right and these these are all kind of traditions and they they milled a whole bunch and things like that and you can kind of read in any tradition or you can find books that kind of cross between the traditions and things like that modern day this kind of went to I mean the people can figure out important books I'll just throw a few Ella Rick it kind of went to Ella Rick and then Bob Salvatore yep David Gemmell and the the the what we call grimdark which has kind of been used pejoratively but i think they're accepting it so I don't think it's pejorative now grimdark from right now right ah dark towers really over here honestly but it's just sharing something I would call doc Parra weird rather than yeah yeah dark tower is like its own weird thing so but these are kind of do you know I mean by grimdark that's kind of a new term that people are throwing around talking about stuff like Joe Abercrombie and and in people like that then they're kind of writing than the new sort of gritty novel they're kind of in this tradition that you can definitely see a difference between something like Salvatore is something like this where this is the world sucks and everybody's murdering each other and this is guy with swords cuts off lots of orchids and stuff but they're kind of in the same tradition if you want to investigate this I would suggest reading some Alaric I would suggest definitely reading some Gemmell just you know a book or two nights of dark renown would be a good one here it's one of my and and more caulk is the author here I don't know if I spelled that right he's a great writer and so in anyone anyone else have some favorites in in the heroic line that you want to toss at us our series is really quite good there they're also public domain so you can get them for free they're fantastic a lot of the early things that became science-fiction tropes started in John Carter I mean and Lucas and people I admire them but they lifted wholesale that's what we do as writers we borrow right and we make it around but if you read John Carter to be like that's where Lucas got that Wow the bad guys are called Sith huh you know things like that so yeah Beowulf and things like that the the reason I don't put them into this tradition is there it is Hays question whether they the authors of those who were writing fiction or not whether they thought they were writing nonfiction this is definitely in that tradition but I kind of look at the modern fantasy element so any anything else that you guys would throw in here well no because this is often really dark it's space opera space operas its own we you have to you can't like do one-to-one correlations I feel because a lot of space opera is actually epic same fit tones and things like that but alright so we'll just leave that there we'll go over to the epic usually this is multiple viewpoint fade of the world sort of lengthy series sort of stuff but it doesn't have to be of course it starts with talking and then after talking there was the Tolkien response era which is Thomas Covenant and genre you may say it Shannara but he says it Shannara so I've learned to say it the way that he does um these are kind of these were kind of response books because Tolkien wrote this awesome stuff and then died and so people like so now what I would also that there's Finn of are the unive are the unive are by guy Gavriel Kay who helped put the silver healing together and wrote parts of it if but there there's that kind of era and then it went into like the the 80s David Eddings era and tad Williams melanie ron one of my favorites barbara Hamley and other of my favorites Robert Jordan yeah who's that so the this is kind of epic tradition some strongly recommended books with a slight content warning would be any of guy Gavriel Kay single volumes because I think he's fantastic so ty Ghana or our song for our bone it's French so our bone song for our bond those are both fantastic slight content warnings there but they're amazing and they were kind of this era here where this is this is kind of a transition away from tolkien-esque we slowly start very token we get up there's other great stuff in here but this is kind of this tradition and then the the modern books in this series would be the the big one to be Mallos in book of the fallen yeah by Steven Erikson so if you want to dig into something big and and contemporary it would be able to be malice in most of my works are in this tradition also so so what else do we like in this my favorites are Thai Ghana dragon Spain and the Sun runner books by Melanie Ron with of course Robert Jordan Ted Williams is quite good as well memory sorrow and thorn Thomas covenant is fascinating but depressing it's like a kick to the stomach to read it's about a guy who gets sucked into a fantasy world but he's had leprosy is whole life like modern leprosy just means he doesn't have feeling and a lot of his skin and there he can feel and he thinks it's the dream and the first thing he does is raped someone and then he refuses for the rest of the series to believe that it was real he has to convince himself as a dream because otherwise he has to admit that he did this horrible thing and so it's all about this messed-up guy who doesn't want to admit that the fantasy world is real because it means that he wasn't just doing something in a dream it means it was a real person that he assaulted and that's why they're called The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the unbeliever it's a very tolkien-esque world but it's like what if Tolkien were star instead of starring a hero starred someone very antihero it so yeah what other traditions in here that you guys like okay Allison croghan it's okay these a lot of these things what's why in what's not is very tough to yeah what's that why isn't Hickman yeah Dragonlance Dragonlance is definitely in there and McCaffrey she thinks she's science fiction so they're yeah they really if you haven't read dragon flight I'll just say to all of you three dragon flight it holds up really well in fact it's better than a lot of what's being published today has beautiful use of language Hugo Award winner and it's one of the quintessential lets fly on dragons and do cool stuff books but it's also very literary and in awesome so dragon flight is is is really really good but it is science fiction technically Dragonlance dragon Lance is the epic equivalent of Bob Salvatore there they are D&D adventures taken and rewritten as epic fantasies they are quite good they scale a little young yeah Martin is smack-dab between these two and he's really more on the epic side but he avoids some of the epic stuff kind of subverts unintentionally like a lot of his protagonists are more in the heroic line and heroic doesn't mean that they're always heroes that's just the name of the tradition because it tends to focus on gritty one dude low magic you know like Conan and things did and so he's really writing epics that steal a few things from over here is where I would put Martin yeah I can't but anne mccaffrey said she was writing science fiction she put a prologue and every one of the books that said this happens on this planet in this star system and they're genetically modified animals that are local that they have genetically modified to become these big flying talking dragon things that use something that really feels like magic yeah so I allow the author to just say this is what I think this is because having an argument about what's fancy I mean the prestige which if you guys have seen that movie the book is fantastic it won the World Fantasy Award the year came out and the author said yeah but this is science fiction so whatever all right well what else we got good kind good kind is good kind is epic that's also stealing from her like a little bit because good kind tends to have the one central protagonist but it is the fate of the world stuff I would put Goodkind over here but he's reaching over and saying I'm gonna do epic fantasy that's really focused on a couple of characters with um with a strong heroic tradition about those characters so yeah but that's this is my this is where I'm pretty minx what else what else do you guys like in this tradition okay Pratchett Pratchett's got it I mean he's he yeah he really does he really has his own category Pratchett is the genius if people come to me I will say that I feel that there are two legitimate geniuses riding in fantasy day once Pratchett the others guy Gavriel Kay the rest of us are doing an okay job and some are doing better than others but those are the those are the two top writers in our field and Pratchett is completely undescribable if you want to read a good Pratchett book pick up either the truth going postal or guards guards don't start the beginning strongly recommend you don't start the beginning because they're all stand-alones anyway because he got better and better as he wrote he started his first book is like a fantasy parody it's a parody of fantasy books and it's okay but about four or five books in he realized I'm gonna stop parroting fan see and I'm gonna write humor about the human condition and something changed where his characters got better and his satire got better instead of parody became satire and it just works so much better the the new way he's gotten better and better like I used to say the truth was my favorite but going postal is just brilliant and so is the sequel so and those are more recent of his so yeah my favorite is going postal right now okay state okay good they get better and better yes so you can start like that and just go Pratchett has has through characters they're all basically in the same world but it's got these set of books he writes about death and other characters from other and he's got the set of books he writes about the city guard what the city watch and then he's got what he writes about an incompetent wizard named winds wind and you if you want to read Pratchett reading order google Pratchett reading order and people have lots of suggestions to where to start and things like that so practice its own weird thing okay we got to talk about children's because they say this is pretty obvious but what you've got the thing you've got to keep in mind is the children's line up until the last ten years a lot of these things would be considered children but they're they're put in these traditions because children's have really was undefined what does the children's book what is a teen book and things like that they started doing a lot more focus on teen novels more recently recently mean last ten years Once Upon a Time you know all these things were shelved in the same place in a library and now you'll see there's a teen section and and stuff like this but usually this tradition was the middle grade fantasy tradition the y-a traditions were all kind of over here because Shanna is really why a David Eddings is probably why a Dragonlance is why a you can make an argument that that a lot of Jordan is why a that moves into adult and but the children's I mean it's pretty obvious what's in here kids get stuck in a fantasy world with Harry Potter kind of being at the end ah mmm no just because the this line right here is kind of the same archetype of story in Earthsea isn't in there but it is it is more of an epic written for for teens honestly and so it gets kind of weird what is children's and what is not it's so hard to define I mean where do you put team writers weird he puts the blue sword right yeah why a but there wasn't a why a category when it was published and so where is it it's really heroic starring a girl it's the one of the only ones you'll find in their heroic line that stars a female protagonist but but it's why a but there really wasn't a why a category but that one was kind of targeted at kid at teens back then and there was a ye a category but it wasn't as well anyway so it gets kind of weird where where you stick things like that but if you want to want to do that then these guys are good Harry Potter of course let's let the teen authors and children middle great authors tell us or fans tell us what they like in this tradition Lloyd Alexander Floyd Alexander yeah part that doesn't have the real yeah it doesn't different it doesn't but everyone it was marketed as a children's book as opposed to Shannara which is kind of the same story which marketed not and I think it's a distinction that for a long time the the middle grade was considered children's and the teen was just lumped with regular fantasy and now we've kind of split out teen is its own thing yeah dark is rising and the thing is like it's it's kind of disingenuous to put all this in children's and not put some of these because basically like Tamara Pierce is what all the boys were reading David Eddings right and the girls were reading like Tamara Pierce or or dark is rising for whatever reason that's just what happened you were the other way around yeah but but and so a lot of these are actually probably in the epic heroic traditions it's just that you know now we lump them all in team and it it's it's just that I kind of imagine this children's sort of Narnia thing that has its own line yeah moles doing this and it's just the kid from our ruling section or another these would probably move over there but let's let's go on to the weird would you put goblins and weird yeah Guymon yeah Gaiman Gaiman is definitely weird Neil Rockstar Gaiman is over here so is so are all the people who count themselves as the new weird show Perdita Street Station by China Mieville China is probably over here these are the genre blenders all of the slipstream stuff is probably in here so Jay Lake and people like that everybody who's just kind of like I'm not going to do like fantasy but I am and I'm gonna incorporate fantasy elements and I'm gonna have one foot magic realism and I'm gonna have one foot in horror it's kind of where these things are going so I'm trying to think of some in the middle though there's got to be some people in there that I'm missing as well as me that's a good example yeah yeah yeah definitely amber definitely right right in this tradition so so there we are that's just kind of the things that given you way more than you want to know but the idea is to kind of you know pick some of these traditions read a few books in the traditions and you can kind of get a feel for finish you and then read some of the modern stuff like read China if you want to do this or read a baqara if you are interested heroic or you know read malazan if you're interested in an epic that kind of thing what would an example of a chosen perdida Street Station was was his breakout I think it's most award-winning he said only have to tell me the city in the city did very very well he's got he's got really also one foot he's got a lot of feet one of them's in literary you know and what's that yeah I would put some of some of Cory Doctorow books over here the most remorse eye inspection so there you go that's more than you wanted to know on all this stuff and these are all this my distinctions to help me understand the way the genre divides you could do this whole thing with science fiction - yeah probably the steampunk has its own its own line that that's its own thing really but it broke off the weird definitely it made its own thing steampunk is perpetually feels like it's on the cusp of really breaking out big and never quite has and it's been there for like 15 years now so it's cool it's got its own culture you can google and read about steampunk but you know cyberpunk was an offshoot of science fiction and it's not what the weird at all it's definitely straight-up science fiction they're both called Punk but they they're very different store subgenres people just call steampunk steampunk kind of I think because cyberpunk hat was such a cool sounding word of their own cons yeah yeah steampunk is big if you want to read cyberpunk the the books to read Neuromancer by William Gibson Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep which isn't actually cyberpunk but will help launch the movement a lot of philip k dick the they co-opted and they kind of pretend he's cyberpunk when he's not the movie was but the books aren't so yeah well they're kind of weird science fiction but yeah alright let's move on to another question this is all just kind of my stuff so this you know yeah Siow infinity blade infinity blade is walking that weird line like Star Wars is where you're using you're using it's it's really space opera without the space it's where you use hand wave IAM to pretend that you've got science it's like Star Trek right there's there's not science and Star Trek there's magic but we use hand waving pretend it's science fiction and it is because we define it that way but teleporters you know all of this stuff this is all magic I'm just in a future saying same with Star Wars jinlun through technology yes probably why they cost by the same yeah yeah it's that you can cut you it should be classified where it where we feel it's right but there's no hard fast science on what science fiction what's fantasy that's why the two Turner's are so easily loved together even though they they're very different in a lot of aspects all right other questions occasionally a book gets published that one the divine is bad if the barriers to entry are so high how does that happen somebody else really liked it I mean you will be all one of the things to start thinking of as a writer as to stop thinking of books as being bad or good and saying who is the audience for this book and how well did they match their audience okay I'll give a famous example of a bad book that we would call that okay so in the 90s there was a fantasy publishing boom it was really kicked off by Robert Jordan but I would say that Ted Williams had it had a lot to do with it as well and there was this boom of people buying hardcover fantasy novels which hadn't happened before what happened is a lot of the people who had been reading fantasy which was pretty new as a genre comparatively if you look at some of these tradition I mean toking and and and CS Lewis and some of these it's kind of a modern sort of thing even more modern science fiction people have been reading that suddenly had the disposable income to buy nice hard covers and that's what drives during the 80s and 90s what drove a lot of books you know before the e-book revolution the hard covers are where you made a lot of your money people were suddenly buying hard covers and there became a fantasy gold rush okay fantasy girl rush of the 90s where the big success story being Carrie Goodkind Terry Goodkind wrote Wizard's First Rule it was a brand-new book that had a lot of potential it was right after right after Jordan gotten big and then Martin had just published that the first of the game of Thrones and other people are doing this Robin hobb was right that era with assassin's apprentice taking off there's like this big boom suddenly all the stuffs happening he comes in with us they have a very big book auction it's got a great agent Russ Galen auctions the book around it goes for reportedly I could be wrong on this report early I think I've said you guys for 750 for three books so 250 per book which was an unheard-of amount for a fantasy novel at that event at that time so people were paying six figures for big books at this time there was seen as the fantasy Gold Rush and during this time editor started snatching up things that felt like Robert Jordan or Terry Goodkind or Jar Jar Martin and the quality that we may put it may not have been as high on some of these books as those some cases they may have been some cases they weren't and they there is a sense that you put a lot of money into it like they put into Terry Goodkind and you can make a best-seller and all the publishers are like we need to have a couple of these tentpoles you see it happening in film a lot to write a big thing happens and it was like we need a tentpole like that and so they all went out and bought them there is a famous book called v sorceress I can't remember the author's name but same exact thing happened Goodkind hadn't read a lot of fantasy he just kind of did it on his own this guy who had only read Goodkind and did it on his own and came with this this book that felt somewhat good kind E and it felt like it tapped into this the book was also horribly misogynistic had a terrible day of sex machina didn't really come together and was and by all accounts a bad book but their idea was that they were really excited about this they paid a ton of money for it went for a big auction they put epic fantasy on of the year on the cover before it was released as part of the cover lettering like it wasn't just like a quote that someone gave they like actually wrote it like the title the fish sorceress epic fantasy of the year was the subtitle and they've released this book trying to tap into this and it is it is kind of the the big famous Waterworld of fantasy books right it was the big huge super flop that came out and you can argue that people got too excited about this and weren't watching the quality enough you could argue that people reacted that the quality was there but people just reacted against the presumption of now you're going to buy this because we tell you you're going to whatever the reason mockery abounded of the book and a lot of times expectations like if people are told you're gonna love this then they're react against that make fun of it it did have some very strange misogynistic things like one of the reasons I think they picked it up is that you know Robert Jordan had this cool gender roles thing we're like men if they use the magic go insane and you know it's got this reversal where the women are kind of in charge because the women then the magic works for them and you know but he did it very delicately and very interestingly and the fifth sorceress if women use magic they go evil and become lesbian SNM dominatrixes if they use the magic yes this was like six figures high six figures was paid for this book but you can see how it feels kind of Robert Jordan and they're like this is just like that and things like this but then you read this book and it's this really strange thing about like the guy's sister goes this and turns into one of these sex-crazed dominatrixes and all the evil women are trying to rape him as the main protagonist who's like this bastion of goodness that if only women would say stupid and not get involved in the magic they'd be okay and it just flopped hardcore that's one reason a bad book gets published they thought they were targeting their market who knows what the but then they thought it was it was a good book in these traditions but they were chasing too instead of making tradition and things like that other ways the bad Goods get books it published though you can argue that you know that some of these books are working you say this book is terrible but people love it well that doesn't mean it's terrible it means that they have targeted their audience and you're not it and there's a division there I really feel that you need to start kind of paying attention to that second thing you said is kind of how I feel about the bread weeks way of shadows okay it's like I read it and it's like trashy science fiction like trashing famine huh and I'm sure someone out there just like really loves it I a lot of people really love it you should try his other series which I feel is stronger light bringer but yes you're gonna find this with everything there are certain authors out there that I don't like it all but other people love it's probably not because the writing is bad it's probably because the writing is wrong for me nobody really liked the fifth sorceress that's probably they were chasing the market they got overly enthusiastic about something that was not high quality and but you can kind of see how that would happen the things like that so there's a lot of reasons why a quote-unquote bad book gets published yeah I know you're not the target audience but the other argument is that sometimes the editors are not you know not as good at Cape Keepers as people assume them to be and that's why the self-publishing movement one of their big rallying cries is let the public decide I was wondering if you could back in topic he presented several weeks back it was like maybe you said it in the first chapter right I'll try I discovered write characters so I know what my setting and my plot generally is and I have to write and put and try and figure out what the passions and the personality and all of these things are for the character when I first writing so I will try them in a situation and see if this is interesting and if the characters working and it's so hard for me to define that one because I can tell you how you can struck a plot this I just go by instinct all right say how that character doesn't work for me and so I toss it I try it again I'm like I know the character doesn't work for me I'm trying to conceptualize yes so as you're going be writing about them they're building themselves in psycho yes interesting way now the second time you go through is it that same person or have you thrown that out they're trying again no no no I throw that out and try again but that I don't go to chapter two if I don't like the character I don't rewrite it I throw the whole thing away and start over yes if I'm gonna revise a character if I'm gonna try a new character in a role I'm gonna do something I'm gonna start over when you start with the character do you how much do you start with do you just start with the name of the gender no I'll start with like like a rap sheet I don't use rap sheets I just feel like I know who they are no yeah III can't do that for my characters but often I mean I can't by the end of a book but I just know who they are there's a book that I'm planning right now that the main character she's just named spaz because she's kind of like that um and she I just know who she is I don't need to like spend a lot of time figuring out what spaz will do because I know what spaz will do and that I won't need to cast someone else in that role because I'm pretty sure I know who is though she is the second person in my notes I thrown her I threw up the previous character was bland and started doing it from her perspective but I didn't even get to a chapter before I threw out the character that way and I'm like oh now this character is boring um and then a new character wandered along and I put them in some of the places that I had these cool scenes written in my head for um and they had scenes were cooler and so spaz started becoming like the you know the heart of the book and so now I'm planning all this book with spaz in mind I'll have to rename her I'm not gonna call the main character spaz what's that you like the name spaz she's a rat girl she goes and catches rats so her family can cook him and sell him good protein she's a spaz the rat girl yeah I may have to just for you guys now but you know stuff like that you know and I just know who she is and and yeah so that's that's so hard for me to help you with on characters because I do characters like that I'm like you know this characters interesting what does she want well I know what she wants she wants this obviously because it's who she is okay I have really enjoyed Stephen King's on writing Orson Scott Card's all of his books about writing how to write science fiction fantasy viewpoint and character are the two that come to mind Scott Meredith's writing to sell is a book that Joshua my agent always recommends I thought it was decent it was written from a agents perspective rather than an author's perspective so it own it doesn't cover the heart of a book it covers that only the nuts and bolts and not the soul which Stephen King covers a lot of the soul and less of the nuts and bolts and I think Scott Card does kind of both did you write those down sure Scott Meredith was the the parent agent for Joshua belma's and Russ Galen who I mentioned earlier and a lot of big agents tonight in fiction/fantasy for a while I told you how agents work you know you have like all these sub agents and then when the agency when the person in charge of it dies basically they all go make their own agencies and so Scott was the big agent for a while and now like four or five of the big agents were Scott's Scott's proto J's so on writing by a king and horses got cards how to write s F and F and the viewpoint character does anyone have any other suggestions save the cat haven't read it but okay so save the cat yep you probably mention it here the Thousand Faces bye-bye Campbell it's more academic it's it's very good don't use it as a guide book to write a story by the way you use Campbell as inspiration and understanding of what a lot of different people have used in their stories before if you start using as a checklist you'll end up with the Star Wars rebels and it goes no that's serious Lucas was a Campbell protege he did a whole series of lectures on him for PBS and the reason that that Darth Vader does not have a father is because the virgin birth is part of the monomyth that's part of the hero Thousand Faces and he hadn't done that yet in the movies so he went ahead and made by virgin birth for one of his characters that did not fit in the story at all this is what you get when you when you uses a checklist well any other books people are recommending blood versus character I haven't read it a lot of people like bird by bird I didn't really care for that one it was too to talk about your feelings and not enough practical advice but a lot of people really liked it so it's worth considering that view plenty character belongs to it the series about okay most the other books tonight are pretty good but they're not they're not really focused on fantasy or sci-fi yeah okay all right let's do like a couple more questions last lecture summarize all the I guess skills kind of break it down that you want us to know sorry the lecture guy wants this for the videos no I have no idea there's just too much like if you come out of this class I'm hoping that you've learned to write your prose better but you've also learned about care I can't summarize I'm sorry people online that just not how this works keep writing yeah that's that's a summary keep riding down the road write about dragons calm yeah I should put up writing excuses do you guys all know about right who doesn't know about writing excuses okay so there's like none of you so that's okay but yeah writing excuses podcast for the online viewers go listen to writing excuses it should be useful to you hopefully through the three times we've been nominated for the Hugo I don't know something like that she said your advice would be to keep writing or this summarize if you're writing your first book your second book and you really don't like it but you're like forty thousand words is it okay just turn it into a novella or short novel yes yes that's okay don't just stop you've got to practice endings okay if you if you just stop too many times you won't get to that ending practice that you need but but you know you have to decide I did just stopped a couple novels but I didn't let myself do it until I'd written several because every book you're going to write you're probably going to feel the same way about because you're gonna start off excited you're gonna do all these things in the middle of it you realize how much work it is and day by day you're gonna be like if only I could move on to something else or be done with this one and maybe I'm wrong and that that won't happen to you on every book but historically most authors who feel that way on a book will feel that way about every book and the idea is that you push through that and then you get excited about it again okay I'm just a two-parter one and did you ever get writer's block so were you here last week okay we did a whole lining writing block lecture so check that one out online and I gave like 15-20 minutes on how to get over writer's block the secret was right anyway [Music] fifteen years of experience right it move on eventually your instincts will tell you what's wrong and why it's wrong for right now right didn't go really that's you that's not what you want to hear but it's it's it's what you've got to hear now you can go back to some of these lectures and or notes or reading a book and be like man I wonder what it was what is it that's stopping me on this chapter but if you just stop and don't keep going it's not going to get better so write it anyway how do I know lots of experience it's almost always that something's wrong with one of the characters or there's not enough tension there's not enough conflict if I'm getting stopped it's because the conflicts aren't working but that's usually a character conflict isn't working okay yes so in stories sometimes you need big characters to build small role whether if you have too many of them and they're all flat it feels like one protagonist bouncing off against the number of people meant to just display him but if you give them too much personality readers think they're important then they get lost in a myriad of names they mean what's the balance how do you find it in this do you have any advice you described it very well it would depend on the genre your writing if it's epic fantasy you go a little bit further towards giving them all on motivations and you go ahead and maybe consider for some of the important ones some viewpoints from them if it's not you pull back and you decide to create two or three really engaging characters and then the others will not look so because if you've got three rounded characters it's okay if the rest are bit parts so make sure you've got two or three really rounded characters in any book all right all right we are out of time it's been fun teaching the class hopefully you know we will run into each other I will forget your names I'm sorry I've only learned like a couple of them anyway that's what happens when I only get to see you guys to what 11 times but you know then Howard showed me up and memorized all your names in like 10 seconds my wife could do that too my wife's a real teacher what's that ase if you still remember some but all right week from Saturday bring your your things you can turn in your sheet right now make sure it's got your email address that you'll be sending me the rest from it's on it if you got it if you have you know your final turn me in the sheet and email me your final inning that time between now and then if you aren't gonna make your 30,000 come talk to me right now thank you guys [Applause]

Channel: zmunk

Views: 5,898

Rating: 4.8974357 out of 5

Keywords: brandon sanderson, BYU, creative writing, interview, q and a

Id: axMLMlaLvzc

Length: 73min 8sec (4388 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 26 2017