Sanderson 2014.7 - Revisions and Prose

a friend of ours is looking for an editor many many copies of these books he's doing really well they're self-published yeah so he's gonna put two things up here one's a URL for the copies of these lectures that are going on my website and the second one's an email if you want to contact Adam he just asked us if we'd ask the class he's looking for you know it's a paid thing he wants to pay some people to do editing for him he's looking for editing students so we I said I'd mention it so yeah you have those cards I think so questions here we are we're about halfway through aren't we I would say now yeah about halfway so how's it going with your writing this semester what's that not halfway done specifically those who are not in the workshop class how's your writing going are you doing it are you actually a actually achieving something we have gone through all of the basics of what I wanted to cover in the class you know one hit on each thing today we're gonna delve into prose a lot more deeply and the idea of show verses tell and concrete description and all these lovely things but you've had a taste of basically everything so let's see what you guys are interested in knowing from me by the way I brought goodies so thank you for yes question a good question but I get stuck writing because things don't don't make sense I this comes down to how well do I know my own writing style and part of what I'm trying to get you to do in this class is learn your own writing style and style more in that case I'm talking about more the idea of learn what works for you what encourages you to write for me if something isn't working it could be one of them many different things one could be I just don't feel like writing that day right sometimes it just it doesn't work right and no matter how much you want to force it it just doesn't come together and on those days I write it anyway I set it aside and the next day I reread it and I see was this really as bad as I thought it was and sometimes it is and so then I start over usually my subconscious has been working on it so the point that I know kind of how good or how not good it was and that and my subconscious works on how to fix it and the next day then I'm excited to write it again because I've worked out how to fix this problem sometimes that doesn't happen and it is legitimated the Jimmy up legitimately a problem and so I keep writing and I see how much it impacts the book if it is a major character thing that's not working at some point I have to stop and start that character over and that is like my last resort because I know if I stop and start over it could be very damaging to the book for me momentum this is part of my writing style momentum is like king I'm making a book work and coming back to something after losing my momentum or starting over can be really hard on that book and on me now it can be worth it there are books where I've had where I've done that and it has come out wonderfully but I by everything I can do to not do that firefight which I just finished had one major problem in the magic system when the characters superpowers it's a superhero books just it wasn't working right for me but the characters who they are and their emotional contact with the other characters all these things was fine and so I was able to write the whole book and then get done and say okay here's what I need to have happen and then I brainstormed with my my team and we came up with what would make that all work and now I can go revise and repaint that and make everything work when I was working on the Mistborn books there was a character and the third book who was not working and it was the character's own emotional connection to the book and for me that just is not something I can paint over later I had to stop rebuild the character from the get-go and rewrite their conflict and who they were so it just depends on the situation do you want a co lost you want SIL or do you want death then another could be it was the person that's the question Colossus all right here's the colos so these are these are things we always I like to have people bring their come to signings to like bring their kids right and their kids will be like they're in line just bored and on they get up the front I feel so bad for these kids so iPod like here's a sticker they're so excited they're like the Mistborn temporary tattoos which are like awesome for adults but for the kids they're like no good a circle with a spike so I had Isaac work with some artists and we got a little SIL sticker and a little koloff sticker that I can be like here it's a monster or a little fairy thing so all right questions oh now there's a lot go for it yes okay great oh yeah okay so you you can come up with like powerful climactic scenes or right aha but you're having trouble filling in the gaps boy this is gonna be a difficult one from for me to quote-unquote diagnose because I've known people who are like this and the way they write their books which is like fundamentally bizarre to me it's like I can't even conceive it is they write all these cool scenes and they just keep writing them and eventually they put them together and string them together in a book and do a revision to make it all flow together and they just keep writing fun scenes no matter what I can't comprehend that that just doesn't work for me at all because I don't know where the character is emotionally but that's how they film movies right actors can do this and so so yeah that's one way you could approach it if you're writing great fun scenes that's like the best first world problem to have right you're like I don't know it goes in between but I've got these great fun more fun scenes that's good my advice if I were running into this problem for me I would say well what can I do to make a fun cool sing scene that strings together these other two ones that I've designed obviously that scene is boring to you you need to find things that are exciting can I change the viewpoint that off is not like can I do it from the viewpoint it's if I'm just like bored with a book and feel like I'm in a rut I do a one-off viewpoint I can do this an epic fantasy very easily with the third-person thing I'm like alright the waiter I'm gonna make the waiter really interesting and he's gonna come in and serve all these bizarre characters of mine and be like no you know and be involved or something like that or the wall guard or something like this let's make them fascinating change the viewpoint shake it up or can I put it in a different setting I will often be like this scene I need this scene it's important it strings together these two scenes but it feels like it's just going to be painting by numbers let's put it somewhere really visually interesting and then have some motion going on can you have something happen in the scene unexpected that's only a small little thing that but can force you to have this you know make this scene work can you go you know go watch some of your favorite movies particularly good action movies wait and see it what they will do foresee where they have to get across you know transition from point A to point B and the good ones will always have something interesting happening you know somebody's operating on someone else bones is operating on someone while they're having a conversation or you know it's on Hoth and Han and everyone are arguing but they're running through the tunnels while snow is falling down and c-3po is like getting locked away and there but this is exposition is what they're doing while they're doing it can you find whatever that is for your book and make it work avoid the episode one two three problem which is we take a stroll and talk about it in order to advance the plot lots of strolling in those movies avoid the strolling look for something to happen okay try some things like that this is a great problem to have because if you're writing good scenes all you really need to do is figure out how to make the good more good scenes Zef sill or a colossus so okay I don't surprise you okay well I've got more of these so there you are if you haven't read my books that makes no sense to you but there you go all right write a good question revising yeah so so you can give that too there are people in this this room that would love that so revision revision is one of these these things I hate revision right I absolutely loathe it whether is it took me so long to get published is because I would never revise my books I would write a new one instead right I told you guys this in class I'd be like I'm I'm I could do this better and then write a new book I eventually had to learn how to revise my process for revision on what I found works very well is to make it very goal based in other words I identify what do I want to achieve in this draft and I work toward that now what I want to achieve can be can be varied thanks Corbett so we have what we call polishing drafts polishing dress and this fits in a lot with what we're talking about today so I'll do some more Q&A but this is kind of part of our whole prose thing so it's good to do a revision lecture this will be a little bit longer than the other questions that I might answer so you've got a polishing draft now a polishing draft the goal is to clean up the language okay and make the language better so you are looking for things this is where you're really looking for show verses tell right when you get us something you've got this paragraph where you're like wow can I show this in a few lines instead of this big bulky paragraph can I cut out most of us repeat ourselves we do this in language a lot but we do it on the page what you'll see a lot of times is a character will say something and then they'll do what they said and then the narrative will explain what they just did and you really only need one of those three depending on the scene so a lot of times particularly journeyman writers will show then tell or tell then show because they don't quite trust themselves yet and I do this a lot still - you repeat ideas you get things across so cutting is really important in a polishing drop looking for the right word oftentimes being a mashed master eviction and word choice it's not about using large words it's about using the right word when you can find one word that replaces another word yet increases the convey the ability for the reader to understand and imagine the story then that's what you want to do there were times in and Peretz editing of my Wheel of Time books where I would say something you know was was a wooden bench and she'd be like what kind of wood I'm like well that does make a difference and if I change that one word gives a little bit better of an image it's very easy swap to make it does not make the book any longer but increases the visual power of the book you don't always wanted to do that but in places places you indicate that helps if you say cedar or pine instead of wood then that gives a different feel to to the description so you're looking for the right word and we will we will do this a lot of times when you have an adverb you know you can replace the adverb and the word before it with a better word that just means that instead of ran quickly he rushed or things like this where suddenly you've got you know you're you're giving the correct word in case so looking for the right word you're just looking to increase in please crease clarity and if that's your gig beauty of the language depending on the story now I've talked before about the idea of window pane prose I'll go into that a little bit more but you know what your goals are for your prose you're looking to do these things so how do you do this well I when I'm doing a polishing draft will often be reading through the book only to do the polishing draft I'm not looking for other things I keep my eyes focused on this there are writers who will read their book backward in order to do the polishing draft they start with the last paragraph polished that and then move up in order to polish that Mary likes to read her book out loud to polish reading out loud helps a lot with a polishing draft however you do it that's a separate type of draft now what you are probably asking more about is the kind of the editing draft then the major changes draft so what I do is my very first draft I am a quintessential outliner which is the COO else what we call a one drafter which is like I don't stop I have to have momentum I start at the beginning and I write straight through this thing often chronologically or at least chronologically by character viewpoint and that is draft number one and that can be really bad right draft 1 that's my 1.0 equals that the reason for it being bad is I because I am this style of writer I if I come up with a better idea mid-stride I have to just change the book as if it is going toward that new idea and I do not revise what's come before I add characters I drop care Jers I add plot archetypes I do all kinds of things like this in the middle of chapters and don't bring the rest of the book up to speed because uh momentum is so important for me I've got this great outline I keep my momentum bike and keep the outline going as I write and I go straight through so when you read this you will often be like wow we should never read this in fact when I finish this I sent to the company don't read this because you're like wow this is really bad you're like where this character come from you can watch me doing this on a war breaker by the way which is the one I wrote and posted the chapters online as I did it like in one of the the first third I'm like I don't need this chapter this character and they just vanish no explanation there's not there anymore things like that so draft one draft two then is where I fix this I fixed the big problems and what I do when I'm writing draft one is I have a file open notes for next revision is what we call it right now and I will be keeping in this thing comments to myself about things that need to be changed there's not very many by the time I'm done with draft one because they're only the big things and I really kind of know what they are really while I'm doing this draft is when I'm really filling in the notes for a next revision because I am noticing smaller scale things that need to be fixed but I'm not focusing on those right now I'm fixing the big problems I'm putting this in this and a place where a reader could actually read this enjoy the book and yes they'll notice problems but they won't be problems like why Brandon does this this plot entire plot device be dropped or why did their magic change to a different magic entirely to make it cohesive so I'm keeping a list there and then draft three is my first polish and during the polish I'm also filling out my notes for next revision where I'm really not trying to fix any of these things I'm just looking for problems and keeping them in my file at that point I send draft three to my editor and my agent and to my writing group usually though sometimes they get draft 1 and 2 or whatever and I solicit feedback which when the feedback comes I add to my notes for next revision all this feedback and then we do draft 4 which is kind of usually the big one this is the big hard one this is where you know that you'd think that draft 2 would be because there's there major problems I'm fixing but I'm still excited about the book I'm eager to get it into people's hands I've now know the things that I changed how good they are later in the book so it's easy to fix them the first part dress forest where it's like man I need to fix this character that I thought was working just fine or man I need to cut this whole thing out or the book is just not funny enough I need to enhance the humor a great deal or just the hard things that you get when your editor calls and it's like there's not enough tension in this book Brandon you've got to amp it up by like 200% or things like this and so I will go to my notes for next revision file and I will usually organize them by severity so I've like major problems medium medium problems little things and I keep this file open and they've got bullet points of all the stuff I want to fix and I keep these this open as I read through the book from the beginning and I'm looking actively for ways to change these things as I go and I'm often making notes underneath them changed here changed here fix this when I get something completely done usually the medium ones or something I can fix in one chapter and I just move off the list and I'll move them down below or strike them out and things like this and this document is on nowadays is on our SkyDrive so that Peter and Isaac can access it at the same time and my editor in New York can and they can be adding things and dynamically changing it as I am and and things like that but that's not something you really need to be worried doing but this whole thing and then I usually finish it my goal is to have most of these things taken care of and most of these things buy the diamond done with draft four so that these things can all then move up and then my big problems are not so big anymore and then after that it's basically bug fixing sometimes I have to do a draft five that is as big as draft four but after that bug fixing and then I'll end with a polish so I do a Polish a draft three and then whatever the last draft is so and that's my methodology now that's very different from a lot of my friends who are who are discovery writers so when Jancy comes in to talk to you ask her how she handles revision because she has a very different process and she's quite good at revision so I'll just let her tell you about her methods and that might help you guys approach revision from a different standpoint as well all right do you want colossus ill or is f colos he's ready to eat some heads all right let's do another couple questions in the back go ahead yes I finished the draft unless it is I very rarely don't there are two or three occasions where I've not finished it and those are all individual enough I can tell you each of them you can kind of maybe get some perspective there I did not finish a book the first one book I never finished was called myth Walker I was writing it during an era where I've been sent I've written a laundress dragging steel white sand and I had been sending these big epic Fannie's off and they weren't selling and I got kind of discouraged and I felt that myth Walker was too generic that it just felt like what I'd done before it was like Dragon Steel yet again and I got just really bored with the book and I stopped that's dangerous I also think the magic was broken and just didn't work at all which is bad for me in a book another book that I finished what didn't finish was death by Pizza which is necromancer who owns a pizza delivery joint which is me experimenting with urban fantasy and I just it was it was done as an experiment for fun between two other books I do that a lot and I don't always release those books Alcatraz was one of these two turned out alright rithmatist was to death by pizza was not it just didn't work the book as a whole it was a fun thing that I tried doing for fun recursion is fun too and and at the end of the day I'd like hey I learned a whole lot this wasn't meant for publishing it went it didn't go anywhere good I didn't really the big problem with death by pizza is the whole fantasy side of it just never worked it didn't feel like a real underworld to an urban culture and so I didn't I didn't I didn't finish the book just didn't work but my goals for it were to practice another book I think I may have finished but I never did the revisions on it was was book called liar parts Nell which I was unsatisfied with it as just a quality thing I didn't I was discovered writing a little too much on that and it didn't end up working for me I just didn't like the book but I actually finished that one and never move it rised it so it's different every time it's very dangerous for me if I put down a book like there are some that I've written like four or five chapters on and put down like getting back into that book ever is just almost impossible and so putting down a book is a bad idea for me particularly for the book I have a contract for that's bad and so I look to avoid that at all times it can be different for other people you could have it but I recommend generally for new authors particularly when your skill is still developing - finish books if you don't learn to finish you will never finish and you'll never gain those skills and you'll always be disappointed with what you're writing because you will never progress as quickly as you need to if you aren't actually finishing things okay what do you want Zef silico los the colas there you are much much much alright what's your question yeah just do it every person I've known personally who's their first book that they finish the ending has been disaster even myself ok you just can't learn this without doing that some people I guess can but my first book I ended I did the classic thing both Dan and I did this we were writing along we felt it was long enough we said I'm going to end it now boom I got much better with my second book and so how do you end it you've got to just do this and it's probably most of us our endings are just gonna be like well and now this is the ending as newer writers journeyman writers really in this class I would call you journeyman writers you are getting to the point where you can create a good scene you're getting the point where you can create an interesting character core or a great magic system or you know all these things what you can't do yet is put it all together into a novel and that is something you just have to practice so advice on ending with if you haven't ended before having an ending in mind and writing toward it and just doing that ending if you had you know if you get along you're like this ending doesn't really work anymore but don't have anything better just going ahead and writing that ending would probably be a good suggestion for you but yeah alright what do you want Zef alright Zef punches out and stands up but he doesn't stand up real well I actually brought you the seconds we just got these in and they made the the little thing on the front not the whole is too big so you'll find after you punch him out he doesn't stand up particularly well so we're having reprinted and those will stand up so you'll have to figure out your own way to make him stand to be a stand-up figure but if you Isaac found out if you like cut off another piece of plastic and wedge another piece in its just the hole is twice as wide as the plastic piece that's most of making stand-up so there you go I'm sorry you get the seconds all right it's to like one or two more you've had your hand up a couple times okay that's good are they five different characters oh five dream character voice is the same okay oh boy I have years tempted yeah I think that's I think that's a matter of practicing and asking yourself you know what are these voices what's happening with them go practice one thing I've heard people doing in a situation like this it's taking famous books and trying to imitate the voices of those characters and saying if you can do that it's the whole thing that artists learn you know alright now learn to paint like an impressionist okay now learn to paint like this try doing that and see what you can learn from imitating those character voices like if you can do Matt Koff um that's a really hard voice to do trust me if you can do quoth Matt Cawthon from the wheel time he knew quote he's got a really really cool distinctive voice but what some other good voices if you can do JK Rowling's prose voice is really distinctive right go read her prose not a character dialogue but her prose voice imitate that you know go grab anything that's got a strong bush a lot of the teen books um have really strong voices pick up those and try and imitate and see if you can do those and see where you go alright what do you want alright alright we'll have a lot of deaths that aren't standing up well alright we're gonna go right here besides check Twitter no I don't have a lot of writing rituals I'm a very workmanlike writer I write every day when I can obviously sometimes I can but I basically I get up I turn on music and I write I do read my scriptures first um we're at BYU can talk about that if I don't read my scriptures first and I don't get to them so but if I read them first it's like hey I have to read my scriptures now and I want to write every day and I do write every day basically and so if I know if I've read my scriptures before I write I've read my scriptures every day so I guess that's a writing ritual but otherwise I don't do any anything wacky I do have at read desk tried desks are nice you put the little computer up on the thing and you walk while you you type and things like that it's very nice um so there you are what do you want you want is f all right I'm gonna throw in to you I think they might fly all right oh hey he's an assassin that's what he does all right see if you can get those to stand up all right let's do like one more okay we're okay yeah ask Howard about this when he comes in I'm gonna give you some answers but Howard ran into this exact problem in his comic and had to come up with a solution for it which I think has worked out pretty well he has a God character or a deific AI who has access to just way too much information in power there are really a couple ways to handle this the first way is to make the problems the character has to deal with things that they're D if it powers cannot solve this is the Superman problem Superman when his stories are really interesting they're problems he can't really solve with his powers you know it's interpersonal things and stuff like this or the really interesting conflicts with him the other big thing you can do is then make a conflict that is so big that only this person can deal with it and that's kind of what Howard did but the idea is that takes all of this person's energy and efforts to keep this danger contained which means that otherwise he has very little resources for everything else but you kind of have to judge those or you can go do the whole limitation thing but I mean if you want to do deific character I mean Superman is a DFA cavity this is the whole whole thing about him and so he can do basically anything except he can't change freewill so we can't make Lois Lane fall in love with him so so that becomes the conflict of the story decide which kind of direction you want to go and you go with that all right all right what do you want is that that is you find out that stands up and everyone's like oh well I guess I have to have death now but he doesn't stand up real well it kind of stands up the ones that we give out on her will set up I'm gonna need some more water Corbett would you got a bit of coffee today so all right so let's talk prose prose prose prose prose so um maybe you actually read what I write up here yes what's that is yours a dry erase okay yeah well you know I have had that happen before where someone hands me something and well what really happens is that sometimes you have a wet erase board and keep people give you dry erase markers apparently those two sometimes don't mix really well I'm not convinced that this is a dry erase board anyway all right so prose encapsulated in this we are going to talk about the idea of of the basics of prose but we're also going to talk about the idea of getting across information to your reader in a way that does not feel like an info dump as I've said this is the grand skill of science fiction and fantasy writers ability to convey setting and character setting in particular in a way that is engaging that is powerful and is not boring so I want to talk about a few general concepts for you that are good that are gonna help you with this the first one of these is the idea of windowpane pros have I talked to you about windowpane pros yeah I've mentioned it windowpane PA and I think windowpane pros this is a concept that they've talked about in his class which he got from George Orwell which whose s I have read on this which is the idea George Orwell's idea was that the story is a pain or the the prose is a pane of glass through which you see a story happening all right and his goal was to write his prose in such a way that it never distracted you from that story happening on the other side this is a very much a paraphrase of what he said but it's the the concept has gained its own life and has has grown beyond that and a lot of people talk about this idea right now this is generally the goal of popular fiction is to make the prose translucent that does not mean you have to choose this style I want to make you aware of this style there are plenty of authors who do not use this style Pat Rothfuss and and toking neither of them are writing windowpane prose they are both writing pote prose that draws attention to itself in one way or another and the opposite of the windowpane grouse is kind of the prose is kind of stained glass stained glass prose is the idea that your use of language is so powerful and evocative that readers enjoy the prose itself as kind of a as part of the art and in doing so yes it distracts from the story you can't really see what's happening on the other side of the window but you're gaining this addition to it instead and these can I I would call things like Hundred Years of Solitude really has a lot of stained-glass prose going on it doesn't mean flowery it doesn't mean purple it means that the author is doing very interesting things with the prose now both of these are very valid in popular fiction we do focus on this one and in literary programs you'll have a lot more discussion of this style of prose poetry is the form of stained-glass prose usually right and so you're going to want to decide for yourself where you want to be on this there is a middle ground a lot of people say where you run into something like like I would honestly say that that people like Pat and in Tolkien are really kind of in this hybrid area where they're writing this beautiful prose but it doesn't distract usually because it's a Vokoun character like in Pat's case it's a character who's narrating this thing it's about him and so him using this flowery beautiful language makes you say this is a flowery beautiful guy that's what he does and it really kind of enhances your sense of him it does distract from the story sometimes but the the whole idea of the journey through one of his books is this beautiful prose so you could totally do this in a market friendly way as well as in a more artsy literary way but you kind of got to be aware of what you're trying to do and what your goals are I very much write windowpane prose except for the occasional flourish here and there where I'm like I just got you know you'll see it from me often at the beginning of a chapter there'll be a paragraph that inches I never quite get to pass level on this but it inches that direction for a while and then withdraws because I really do feel that my stories I want you to see the the story and not the language my famous editing notation from my for my editor on this was great like I had one that was really great a paragraph that was just like it was one of the most stained-glass prose paragraphs I've ever had and it was really good it was delicious it's not purple or anything my editor gets to it and he circles it he writes Brandon you can't be Jean wolf for one paragraph and then continues on and gene wolfe is an is a famous literary fantasy writer and his prose is very dense and beautiful and that there's a very important lesson there that moshe taught which is the idea that the more windowpane you are the more one of the yeah the more wind up in you are the more this will stand out and look purple even if it's not but because of the surrounding stuff so be aware of this be aware of this push and pull yeah purple prose is prose that is trying way too hard to be flowery and in doing so instead of using the right word is using big words or instead of using a precise word is using lots of adjectives or adverbs and it's you know if you go google purple prose you'll find it a lot of certain genres are famous for their purple prose they call it purple because i'm not sure yeah I remember it being explained to me once but the whole idea is it's an author who's trying so hard to do stained glass prose but they're so bad at it that it looks really really bad okay so yeah oh you asked a question what do you want so it is I think the SIL ones are the cutest cells well yeah she doesn't fly as well as fzf does but she gets distracted so um idea number two so be aware of this idea I'm not saying do one or the other I'm saying be aware of this idea the other big thing um that I like to talk about is something I learned in grad school yes indeed I did learn something in grad school for creative writing is from another student it's called the pyramid of abstraction which I absolutely loved when he explained this idea to me the pyramid of abstraction is the idea that as you're writing grows more abstract it is more able to tackle tackle loftier and loftier ideas but it is harder and harder to to keep your readers attention on the story okay this whole idea between the windowpane and the stained glass but it's pushing so the as you go a more abstract your ability to talk about cool things increases but your ability lose your reader increases also and so we try to use this thing where we tried to ground our prose in concrete language that will really set a scene which then allows us to earn going more abstract and still keep their keep their attention you will see this often in books where people will start their first few paragraphs with a concrete description of setting before they get into the characters arguing and as the scene progresses you will notice less and less references to description and let the conversation go to some interesting topic and then they will that where they'll occasionally give you you know concrete references to what's going on and then they'll bring you out of it and really solidify you back into the scene so using this works really well to help you tackle be able to do some of these lofty er ideas and lets you really keep your readers attention whenever you run into a reader who's giving you the feedback of it feels like this is taking place in a white room or I don't know where people are or I'm not sure who's talking or what they're you know but they want to know what the story is before you're going into whatever it is you're doing another thing that authors do love to do a lot of what we call navel gazing navel gazing is a character wrestling with a deep issue with them it is when Batman broods right it's when you know the character is like ah my father my barons our dad you know this sort of stuff we love doing this the problem is navel gazing goes way up this your art you're like up here you're inside the characters head they're not thinking about things that are happening right now they're flashbacking and all this stuff it's so easy to lose your reader when you do this navel gazing number one you should probably keep it to a minimum I have trouble with this but yeah navel gazing way up here named of course because the character staring inward at their navel so if you want to ground people you want to be concrete in your descriptions so the fun thing to do with this and if you guys have taken the class before seeing this don't don't say anything but is to talk about what really means what is abstract and what is concrete where would you put the concept of love abstract yes talking about love and what it feels often there's gonna be navel gazing and things like this where would you put a dog dog it's abstract this is what people get wrong every time what when I say dog who in here is imagining the same dogs the person next to them not a single person this is all playdough dogs are abstract concepts you know what a dog is so it's a little less abstract and love but this is very high on the pyramid of abstraction because when you say there's a dog in your prose you are giving them almost nothing to vision now you that may be what you're wanting to do these are all tools but you can pull anything down on the pyramid abstraction adding words adding words therefore is but adding words is a dangerous thing because the more words you add kind of the slower your piece reads and that has a danger of kicking people out too so there's a balance here but the idea is if you can add the right words and do the restrictions the right way you can pull your setting down on the pyramid of distraction and give a concrete an indication of what's going on so how would you describe a very concrete dog okay a Corgi Her Majesty's Corgi see we're pulling this way down right now we're all pretty much imagining the same dog we've moved down and suddenly by saying Her Majesty's corgis so Corgi is great because you're able to like I said earlier you can pull it down a little bit on the pyramid traction by just using a different word so no extra words you've done a great job in that case her mat is met her Majesty's corgis um so can we go a little further okay Her Majesty's Corgi who had recently taken a been put in the bath escaped and crossed between us as we sat and comfortably watched having our conversation and then it ate one of the biscuits right sorry I've got a bit of a cough today so you can imagine that scene you can imagine that little dog right you can dress it in a bow you can say it's blue it's you know the court you ran through the paint whatever you want to do suddenly you are making this Corgi more and more concrete but you are adding words now we want to be careful about adding words oftentimes the way to be really concrete and do not add too many words is to pick one or two important details about a scene that you think will evoke the proper setting for that scene and describe those in a very concrete way using precise words and allow the reader to then imagine what goes along with this so the example that Dan likes to use and he's very good at this sort of thing is saying you know if they're if you're in a room and there's bullet holes in the window and you can describe a concrete image of the bullet holes and what the character thinks about those then you are setting the scene in a certain room as opposed to if you're sitting in a room and there's somebody scrubbing the window and waving at you two very different scenes with a concrete sort of image you know the squeegee man you describe you know how the squeegee man looks and what the sound it makes and suddenly you're all there in the room or you describe the bullet holes and the distant sounds of a siren and the room smells of mold suddenly you know you're setting a very different scene and so your goal is to pick a few details that evoke your scene and then describe them in a concrete way one other thing that a pulldown is use multiple census sites get used a lot in books when you can use other senses that information is something that as human beings when we read it it will pull us in a little bit more because we're not used to reading it as often and if it's done correctly in the context of the scene it will pull us into this this scene and it won't kick us out by standing out too much you do have to be aware of the the grill and the phone booth that talked about this thing before that you have to watch when you're doing your descriptions to not mention a grill on the phone booth which is if you were writing a story and someone was walking along and you wanted to talk about the tax forms they had to make sure they got filed and they're just going along and they described their like and there was a grill on the phone booth and then continued on suddenly knowing cares about the tax forms they're like what about well okay there's somebody who cares about the tax forms yeah she's an accountant but everyone else is like gorillas hello gorillas now this is a silly example but it's something to watch out for that if you sometimes give these kind of offhanded descriptions you can really turn everyone's attention away from what's going on in the story yes sure you can do all kinds of things all these rules exist to be broken you just got to be aware of what they are all right and I think the pyramids traction really helps here so what you're trying to do here using both of these two things is you're trying to be conscious and intentional in the way you are approaching your pros and you are trying to decide how much description you want to do now an epic fantasy can can take more description than a urban thriller okay and an urban thriller or a detective novel and things like this it's moving at a really fast clip of Michael Crichton book you will often see that you get like one line of description for a setting or for a person and you got a pack as much in there as you can get in there and use a lot of precise words in your one-line description and if it's detective novel often it's also got to be funny the description makes you chuckle a little bit and you get this this whole thing into your description like when you're describing a person in an epic fantasy Robert Jordan would often use three sentences to describe that same person so you've got that extra room what you don't want to do is a lot of new writers I see to describe that person they take three paragraphs all right if you can you can imagine Robert Jordan who is considered really verbose by a lot of people with like Wow his description he describes so much and he's using often like three sentences how are you doing in four paragraphs of doing the same thing you understand suddenly that you this is something you need to practice and you really really want to cut down all right so trimming being precise these are your goals even if you're doing stained-glass prose whichever one you're doing precision and trimming now for me and windowpane I am looking for clarity first this is number one I'm going to trim and cut down to keep myself clear I'm also looking to evoke character and something about the setting in every description that I do if I can you want to do multiple things with each line so a great description of a room the one where the character you're describing the corgis and the character hates dogs and so or the characters really nervous that this is going to ruin their meeting with the queen or something like this you are giving the characters emotional state and who they are by describing the Corgi and in fantasy you also you know say oh the court had been hit by a color-changing spell of this style you can say thinking something about the character and the magic and the setting all at the same time that's what you want to do pack it all in there if you can you got a comment or question yes you can it happens way more rarely than the other way but it can happen where I've seen this happen is when short story writers transition to novels and they just don't give you anything because in a short story you've got to be so sparse and then you get this novel writer where they're like you know giving you know half of the line about everything you're like I can't imagine any of this because I'm I'm picking up a novel I want to be able to do all of this so do you want one of these things okay what do you want so it is oh right any other questions on prose as we're going along because there's a few more things that I'm going to talk about all right so info dumps all right you as a writer by the way what time we have Isaac 602 great so you as a writer have all of this interesting stuff about your world you've designed and you need to be able to get this all across to the reader number one you probably don't need to get across to them as much as you think you need to get across to them okay I would say that's rule number one is probably you want to air on leaving it out Purdy Lee is a new writer your readers will let you know when they are confused this is importance of alpha and beta readers they will tell you that doesn't mean don't take this rule too far guys all right you do want to be giving indications and hints here's an example of a time when someone didn't when someone left out too much dan has said that the number one complaint he gets again about to the John Cleaver books which are stories about a young sociopath who discovers there's a demon in town killing people and he has to like turn on his serial killer superpowers to go kill the demon the number one complaint he gets is that when people about halfway through the book realized that the killer is supernatural they put the book down because a certain number of people have picked up that book thinking that it is a crime novel only and when the supernatural elements get in they're thrown for such a loop that it bothers them this happened much more in the earlier drafts and then the later drafts he tried to add more and more but even still he says that's the number one complaint he gets about the book and in that case he left out too much if he would have found a way and he he said he wishes he would have found a way to work more indication in the first few chapters that there were supernatural elements to this world so that when the reader got to the demons they were not completely blindsided okay there's an example but in general I find that new writers try to stuff too much in this is a holdover from the days earlier an epic fantasy in particular where we would have this big boring I'm sorry David Eddings I love you but big boring prologue that explains the history of the world that is just like oh my goodness do we have to read all this stuff he got better as he went along but you'll see these things and early fantasy books it's like everyone felt they had to put in this big long boring and they're actually not that long they're only like three pages but you're like can I get to the story okay it's an prologue that explains the entire world and its history to you and this sort of thing just doesn't cut it anymore the genres per dat and progressed readers more sophisticated they do not want to read a three-page info-dump at the beginning of your story they want character and conflict immediately and then they want you to work in setting information as you are dealing with the character and conflict right at the beginning the you will still find the prologue to be a kind of fantasy old standby I like to use them myself but be aware that you want those to be if possible either very short or very active themselves I like David farlands got an a great example of a prologue in the prologue the first ruin Lord's book in which there it's about a different character it's not your main character he's and in the prologue somebody gets murdered over an important book piece of information and what this prologue is doing is it's indicating to you as a reader hey this is a book in which there is magic because it uses the magic and people are gonna die there's going to be fighting in action and then because chapter 1 is here's our main character and he's like buying something at the market and that prologue kind of gets across you this idea so the idea is the on that case you want to set your tone alright it's very early as possible in the book set the type of book it's going to be by the type of prose you're using and then you also want to be on intrusive well how do we be unobtrusive let's ask you guys have you seen this done how do reader writers and I want you to start really paying attention to this when you read books from now on how do writers that you like get across information about their world in a way that is interesting to you and it is unobtrusive Yeah right it's a lecture that is broken up and filled with character moments and things like this that one works real oh how else have you seen it done okay so yes adding that lends that layer let's let's let's go ahead and put that one up here's a great one the viewpoint lens alright I'll talk more about that one let's go right here okay yeah I like that one too go ahead you were saying more or even better an argument about religion yes but it's got to be very natural we've talked about this idea before um we talked about it several weeks ago but let's go ahead with other suggestions okay okay right okay excellent what else we got in the back yeah I think I talked about this in my other prose lecture they need to know holding off the information until it's needed to know now this is a balance between your setting of tone okay because at some points you need to front-load some of this information to say this is a book in which knowing how the magic works is going to be very important to you therefore if you're picking this up and reading chapter one we're gonna include some magic discussion in order to set that tone for you but holding off on too much of it until later on is is very useful yeah okay yeah right right so what you want to be doing here let's let's talk about this idea so you guys have these things so in real writing terms my suggestion to you when you you're like I need to get across this stuff about the setting I've got this is gonna be important for the plot it's important for the character know it's important to set the tone I want all these things in here avoid the paragraphs that look like this on the page when someone opens it up okay let's not say you always should avoid those you author you should never have those but I would say avoid that think about you know if this all is world building there are some books that that's appropriate for as I've mentioned you guys I'm still reading Jonathan strange & Mr Norrell and there's a lot of this and that is just how that book is and the more people you're right by the way the more you realize that certain books their strength is also their weakness and there is nothing you can do to get rid of that weakness when you write the book we talked about this in writing group sometimes we will talk about and say this is this books issue in order to fix this issue I would have to make it not be this book for John for strange and Mr Norrell big thick paragraphs of description and setting and really about the magic and stuff are part of what makes the book work it is also the thing that makes the most people not refinish the book so be aware the I'm not trying to get you to write cookie cutter stories where they're all exactly the same all following this one style of writing I'm trying to say do things deliberately and aware be aware of what the costs these sorts of things particularly the beginning of the book are going to say to your reader steep learning curve dense prose reader beware okay whereas if they come in and they see something like little paragraph of evocative description talking about the senses followed by quotes people talking oh that's cool oh another paragraph here okay and then a few more little paragraphs because someone's doing something this kind of indicates someone's doing something you yeah that they're going around there's different people doing things and then some more quotes at the end they look and they look at that page you're like oh this is a fast-moving book this is a book where people are having conversations where things are happening now you don't want to just cheat but if when they read that book your goal is by the end of this page if you went said to that reader and started quizzing them about the characters in the world they'd be able to answer your questions and maybe they would almost be surprised oh I know this about the world oh I know this takes place of the steampunk world and I know that they have you know airships and I know that our main character really wants to be a ship captain and I know I know all of this stuff but that's not what this was about it was not a conversation even though this is a good ones was not a conversation about how I want to be a ship captain it was a conversation about you know I need to buy a new horse and arguing that the horse merchant and after that you know all of these things then you've really done something good then you started with conflict you have gotta cross character and setting by what the character is doing and their natural life and you are having this all come together that's what I call the grand skill when I talk about it when an editor or a new reader picks up your book and they read a few pages and you have slipped all of these world details in here through the way that people are talking and whatnot then you are really doing something if you're doing that with character too I can guarantee if you do this and you have a VOC character and setting without having this scene be about the character of the setting every editor in New York will keep reading okay now it'll come to what I was talking about earlier putting it all together in a novel is a lot harder but your first job is to keep them reading to prove that you can do it this is what you need to do now first person those growing first person helps you cheat on these sections a little bit but third person lets you get away with other things that we talked about before so practice this seriously if there's one thing that you can practice day by day it is making every scene that you do have this sort of thing where we're showing rather than telling what do I mean by show versus oh we talked about this during the other week yeah we talked about it a good where you are instead of saying oh I was gonna maybe we'll do this next week I was actually gonna pull up some examples of pros and let you guys so what we're gonna do next week is let's get some I'll get some examples of pros and I will bring them to you and we will try to do this to them instead of what they are already okay it's gonna be fun I might even bring some mine in okay I'll probably ask the the workshop class if we can steal their pros [Laughter] and we will practice on making this because this is something every writer can practice alright alright what time do we have now we got like 6:15 we go to 25 after okay so let's do a few more questions rare yes yeah um I don't know why either most people would say that they thought it started went better and more Breaker than the way of kings but yeah I would say it that in that case is just personal taste the the prologue is kind of this crutch that we use in right and fantasy writing it's a great tool but it's also a little bit of crutch it allows us that when you're picking up a book and it says prologue on it number one some people skip the prologue anyone here just skip the prologues yeah there's the same of the population it always just skips a prologue so be aware sometimes they won't let you have this tool but what the tool the prologue says to those who read it is this is probably separated by viewpoints and/or time from what's going to come next and so in way of kings using prologues as I did says to the reader the this is going to be interesting for the setting in the world and these characters but these are not who the story is about it's become a bit of a cliche so you have to use it wisely um you know the I I don't want to speak ill don't I'm not trying to pick on anyone specific but the prologue that starts with a baby being rescued or in some way and then foster doubt and then 18 years later that's the main character is like one of the most used prologues in all of fantasy and every year in my class i have like two or three people who write up that that's their prologue or their first chapter that doesn't mean you can't do well because that's what harry potter did okay and harry potter is a fantastic book but you to be aware that's if you use these same ones over and over you've really got to use them in a way that makes them stand out so yeah it yeah I was using the prologue I'm like here is what the tone of the book is gonna be but our first chapters guys are gonna be kind of depressing because Khaled ins in prison in prison he's a slave it's gonna be a kick to the face but here's all this cool stuff that I promise you're going to get to once you've earned it which is kind of cheating but I can cheat a little bit more because I have the name recognition people have read my books and they trust that I'm actually going to make good on it things like a character trapped as a slave is like a great cool archetype that I love unless the reader doesn't make good on it later on and if they trust you that you will then you can you can do things more easily what do you want you want Zef okay Zef is now gone we have silh oh wait there's one hiding back there so we do have nobody's oh okay there was another question in the back okay yeah - Carrie - I was showing um I get this this is interesting I get this from my my editor way more than my adult editor where I felt like I've shown a scene and don't need to show with the characters emotion reaction and the why a editors like so what's he feeling right here and I don't know if that's a difference between the editors or a difference between the genres but I do get that sometimes - and I find that I like to use the character thought trope writer the tool it's not really a trope but the idea of the characters I'm thoughts directly in quotes or not in quotes in italics where it's like I started paragraph with yada yada yada then thought yada yada yada and that's all um underlined or italicized really it's all in the telex and then we go into a paragraph that kind of explains that and I use her thoughts like dialog to break up really what she's musing over her thinking about so the character thought can be something that the readers like what is your character's reaction this breaking into it with what they're actually thinking or feeling is often what I think readers are asked are wanting there so they're like you're showing all this but I I want to know the character I want to feel what they actually think so you can actually put it in thoughts you don't have to but you can and using a first-person view point helps with this a lot but you don't always want to just do first-person so try adding in some thoughts try adding in some feelings okay what do you want there's this is the last cell here I pass it back to him I don't want it back there all right yeah no that's not really what show verses tell usually in a writing terms is used to mean usually in writing for instance someone says show don't tell show it's it's the sort of thing where you say where you're tell is he was lonely and you wrote that that's a tell you're telling me he's lonely that can be just fine the thing to remember about Joe versus tell which I think I mentioned before is you can't always show you've got to have this balance between but the show for he's lonely is having him pick up the picture of his ex-girlfriend who dumped him and sitting there and staring at it and then you know starting an email tour and then deleting it which gives a very different you know it means what does that mean that that tells you the specific type of loneliness tells you why is lonely tells you what's going on or you know you show the character sitting in the bloody room by themselves and listening to the conversation that's happening in the next table over and this kind of whispering to himself what he would say if he were part of that conversation and chuckling to himself but being too shy to go join with them that shows a very different character Oh see that's that you get an AA on that one with the he is lonely you don't and so you are looking for ways to set up your story in such a way that you can readers like to be able to infer these things about the character and when they do infer them they have a stronger emotional connection and when you can see it as it's happening rather than just being told it you also have a stronger emotional connection to the character he usually forces you as a writer to make a scene or a little explanation of what's going on and who this character is rather than just taking the shortcut which was he was a lonely he was a lonely man he was lonely sometimes you do want to use this but that those shows are really powerful things that when you learn to use them correctly will create an emotional impact for your reader all right over here mystery subplots doling out clues Dave's mentioned it three times before it becomes relevant works pretty well test readers are really important because I usually suggest rule of thumb err on the side of being a little more obvious than you think you need to be because readers generally because you know the whole thing things you think our huge clues are only minor clues to a lot of readers and then see how quickly they pick it up and make sure that you're giving red herrings and things like this but mention something a few times it just depends on the pacing of your story right if your story you can have a mystery plot that is paced like technically like The Da Vinci Code is a mystery plot right and the Vinci Code is kind of plot like mini mystery mini mystery mini mystery mini mystery and that's how they pull you through and so in this you get clue clue clue answer clue clue clue answer clue clue clue answer or really clue clue clue question clue KooKoo question but really that's how it's pulling you through this plot where is a whodunit mystery is a different style where it's mostly focused on this where it's little clue little clue little clue distraction no back up little clue things like that so what is the pacing of your story how often that'll didn't indicate how often but you need to give this sense of regression and need to be indicating we are moving toward our answer all right what do you want cool off or is that cool loss it is here you pass one of these back all right let's do one more go for it trust your reader readers are better at picking up show verses tell picking up tell are shows than you think shows can do a lot more than you think they will they are worse in general at picking up clues about the entire story then you think they will be because you have all the information and they may not be reading the book all in one sitting and all of these different things remember you can't fool everyone and if you do you've probably written a bad book which means you just have it completely now not necessarily but you have a completely 180 in the middle where it's like this makes no sense to anybody I so what the like the perfect reveal for me as an author to get is when the majority of readers are figuring it out around the paragraph or two before it comes out but really worried that their writer excited they're right where that if I do that that means that like ten percent of the readers have figured it out chapters and chapters ago and another like 25 percent of the readers don't figure it out until a chapter later where I'd go into depth about what just happened but the majority of the readers are like they're on the page being like oh is it oh and then it happens and that's what I shoot for getting that balance down for yourself is going to depend you just got the experiment okay all right what do you want Zathura colos Telos it is alright let's go ahead and break for the week I will try to bring writing samples we can play with next time bring up your little finger boppers have a good week

Channel: zmunk

Views: 15,310

Rating: 4.8639455 out of 5

Keywords: brandon sanderson, BYU, creative writing, revisions, beta readers, first draft, second draft, concrete language, window pane prose

Id: hjw0UGuG0Dc

Length: 75min 49sec (4549 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 29 2017