Writing Fantasy: How to Stand Out in a Crowded Space, Ft. Daniel Greene | iWriterly

in this video i interviewed daniel green a youtuber all about writing fantasy and how to stand out in a crowded space if you aren't familiar with daniel where have you been but he runs a youtube channel of more than 200 000 subscribers as of late 2020. and he makes videos about all things sci-fi and fantasy which is probably why i was drawn to his content and that includes interviews with best-selling authors like brandon sanderson and christopher pellini book reviews fantasy news and more we have a really exciting conversation in store for you guys today so stay tuned [Music] hey book nerds i'm meg latorre i'm the author of the cyborg tinker which comes out to november 17 2020. if you pre-order a copy and fill out the pre-order giveaway form in the description below you will be entered to win one of more than 30 prizes some of those prizes include signed copies of the cyborg tinkerer tct merch character art bookmarks books by authors you know and love and much more and on the release date live stream i'm going to be giving away a kindle stay tuned to the end of this video to hear if you won this week's prize i also formerly worked at a literary agency on this episode of iwriterly i'm going to be interviewing daniel green and we're going to talk all things writing fantasy fantasy tropes and what it's like to be a writer youtuber hybrid now before we get into today's content hit that subscribe button and ring the bell if you haven't already here on iwriterly i create videos about how to be a successful modern-day author including traditional publishing and self-publishing one more quick thing this is a two-part collaboration essentially so i interviewed daniel here on iwriterly and then daniel interviewed me on his youtube channel so once you're done watching this video definitely go on over to his channel and check out that video i will leave a link in the description below without further ado let's jump into the interview first thank you so much for joining me today i really appreciate your time and you know to join me and stuff of course i really enjoy what you do for do you consider yourself authortube is that the sector you would label yourself yeah pretty quick or just a general youtuber but probably authortube would be the niche well you're one of the few that's like published and have like the bragging rights of bragging rights because like it's to me like i think everyone's like what if i get below four stars on goodreads i'm like i just want to have a book out like that's all i care about i want to have a book to my name it is one star i'm fine with it it's cool well before we get started could you tell the audience a little bit about yourself and your journey on youtube yeah um we actually were talking about this a little bit before we started recording uh i was actually more of a sci-fi guy and then for a college project i was told to uh make a video and try to like get views on it and stuff because i actually have a major in rhetoric and digital media so it's just kind of down that lane and i ended up making around wheel of time because it was actually one of the few fantasy series i had under my belt at the time and it was my favorite thing i ever read and that video got views not like you know to my standards now but like at the time i was like oh my god people are talking about this and caring so let's keep it going and i ended up uh kind of just doing that because people kept saying like you haven't read mistborn read mistborn you haven't had stormlight read stormlight and now i'm reading i see i've read 45 to 50 books this year and now it's my full-time job yeah i was a sci-fi dude but now i am a fantasy nerd and i would say the biggest misconception about my channel is that i'm some fantasy expert when that's not what i want to be thought of it's not what i am it's not whoever claimed to be i'm a nerd who's discovering stuff and has a decent amount of experience now but just like sharing the learning experience with everyone um and it's been a blast uh the day i was able to go to my boss at work and go i'm my boss now by was one of the greatest moments in my life and it's you know i've also been able to interview some of my heroes like sanderson and it's just been amazing yeah we're going to talk about that later because um sanderson is one of my favorite authors too and when i saw you interviewed him i was like oh my gosh that's the coolest thing ever so and your channel has grown to more than 200 000 subscribers so what are some of your biggest tips for growing on youtube and keeping an audience engaged and this is particularly for my audience that is writing books but they also really want to get on youtube so i would love to hear your thoughts so a lot of people forget when they are making a youtube channel and i find this to be actually a detriment because you'll see people get to a certain level and then they even like upgrade their stuff and then they just flatline it's kind of odd you're like you just got a better aesthetic but for some reason you're doing worse than ever youtube's appeal and your appeal as a youtuber regardless of what you do is that it's genuinely you it's you having whatever experience knowledge and because that's new media's advantage right there's not 30 producers around me and writers and editors it's just my nerd dumb being vomited out that's why i think when people upgrade and they start hiring editors that don't know how they should come across they start doing things that are less like there's more of a wall between the audience that's one of the real killers or even prevention of growth i've seen people hit the ground running with channels that are better produced than mine but because it feels very not you know personal it they can't grow um you know they have all these like oh high effects charts and graphs and all these things but it doesn't actually feel like there's any soul to it the biggest advice i'd give anyone who wants to start a youtube channel is to get comfortable in front of the camera i'm lucky that i have a background in debate and public speaking i mean as i said my degrees in rhetoric part of it so i've been doing that for a long long time and i just kind of took that and plopped it over there's a lot of just be okay with failure i mean it took me so long i don't remember how long get my first 10 000 subscribers and then just from there i flatlined and you know there's spikes everyone thinks youtube's a sprint it's a marathon you're not gonna have the overnight success that's one in a million people and even then a lot that's actually not really sustainable success a lot of times you'll see people get a million subs and then just crash it's a grind if you like games like world of warcraft where you grind for hours just take that mentality and put it to your channel uh that's the best advice i can give that is the most interesting comparison i think i've heard all day just like world of warcraft but i agree that it's definitely a marathon and not a sprint my channel took off in 2019 i think i had 3 000 subscribers at the start and then 33 subscribers 33 000 subscribers by the end of the year but before then i've been making content for like two plus years before it takes off so yeah i agree that i don't think that there's such a thing as overnight success so switching it back on you do you think what caused that growth was you just hit a saturation point do you think you got more comfortable how do you think that suddenly started happening for you because it seems like everyone has a different or is it just the mystery of youtube i think it's the mystery of youtube and what they think that your audience should be um because if i make other videos youtube like no no that's not your audience and they won't like recommend those videos but i think part of it was i hit my own niche on authortube where i talk about like literary agencies and rejections most of my top videos are why literary agents reject your manuscript and i had tons of personal experience about why that was for my time at the agency so i think i just hit my own personal niche of a gap on youtube that people wanted to see i guess not entirely sure it is a mystery so there are a lot of people that aspire to be youtubers and or influencers what does a typical week look like for you and what are the biggest pros and cons of being on youtube we're just gonna talk all youtube and then we'll move into fantasy that's totally okay i have to learn to be okay with the word influencer people say it i'm like no i was like uh but you know i i see people buy books off what i recommend i'm like right i'm an influencer that's fine there's a double edged sword to my advice for my work week so for the biggest period of growth in my channel for the last two years up until about a couple months ago i was working 12 hours a day six days a week uh even after i went full-time youtube i just took the same amount of work hours and just put it all straight into youtube um and the reason i was doing that was just because i knew this is the most competitive space arguably in the world right now luckily i'm in such a nice category of it that there's not as much competition but if you're just trying to be a vlogger or something good luck but it's i just you need to have that insane work ethic would i have blown up in the small even on the grand scope of youtube i'm kind of small um would i have to have the small success i've had if i hadn't worked that hard i don't think so that being said there was absolutely a mental toll that was taken um i lost friends i had a relationship in because i was just like this is my dream i'm gonna pursue it relentlessly but it was also like there's a toll and i also don't think i would have i wouldn't have grinded as hard in hindsight so it's really important to remember you need to have a life outside of this hobby slash job it's seen as a gold mine it's seen as overnight success it's seeing all these things when in reality reality you gotta weigh the balances it's it's brutal too i mean you're gonna be getting constant feedback and i don't think the human brain was ever meant to get constant feedback uh you'll be told i've gotten death threats i've had people leave things at my door uh i've had all kinds of crazy stuff happen and it's a weird weird world to be in i'm being honest uh and it's it's one that i don't think everyone needs to take as seriously as i did start it for fun post once a week post once a month who cares as long as you're enjoying it but if you're out if your set goal is i want to be doing this full-time there's a lot of people who want to be like oh like you know you don't have to grind you don't have to push too hard because you know mental health over everything and i agree but you do need to grind to an extent it's a weird delicate balance and it's gonna be different for everybody luckily i'm a workaholic so it kind of just plays into my streaks i am too so i feel you there um and i do think like there's a really big i don't know if it's called burnout culture but there's a lot of youtubers that really struggle with burnout because i think the more content that you post the more youtube rewards it and then if you post less i don't know if this happens to you but youtube will like refer my content less and i have to like build back up momentum for youtube the algorithm to pick up my stuff again and so it's like there's just a lot of folks that struggle with burnout and then you had mentioned like the comment overwhelm and the constant feedback i agree it's something that you just don't as one person you're like what do i do with all of this i don't know the best thing i can say is just remember the kind of person who's going to leave a hate manifesto in a youtube comment section isn't necessarily kind of person whose opinion need to care about yeah i know that sounds like i don't read this like youtube comments are great i've met people i'm now friends with through them commenting on my videos and stuff but there's also like if you have like the all caps rage no punctuation comment just don't really value that yeah don't engage just joke i know i know content creators who will engage with every comment and that's fine i get it if you wanted to go in but i can't take that we're gonna talk about this probably later and on in the the collab and stuff but i'm like a full-time mom and i just find that like it's very mentally exhausting to engage in the folks that are just here to argue and be angry and i just don't yeah so that it's definitely something that youtubers have to balance like do you want to respond if so how far do you want to have that conversation go and what i do is inherently kind of combative right because i'm reviewing books that people maybe love people maybe you're obsessed with have devoted years of their life to studying i mean in some cases and they can really be hurt by someone not liking it and i always just have to remind people like a review is entirely subjective even down to someone reviewing like the pros and the grammar and punctuation an artist could say i intentionally did these things differently and you know everyone everything is subjective if you love something that i hated you are in the better position than me i'm jealous of you every time someone loves a book i don't like i'm jealous of them because i had to waste my time reading something i don't like yeah isn't that the interesting thing about reviewing things and we're going to talk about this a little bit but like as far as book reviews go i don't know that people go into a book and say i would like to hate this you go into it because you're like i would like to love this so that's really interesting i really always do that even when someone says like this is getting mixed reviews this is getting bad reviews i try to find okay they're still five-star reviews what are these people finding and i've had books i've really liked a lot more than a lot of others i would say um okay there's been a few releases especially recently that i'm saying like these are some of the best things i've ever read and others are saying like you're saying this better than a classic and i'm like because not every class is as good as people say it is yeah like so many of them like i have been a well-known chronicles of narnia hater and i will continue being that because i think it's bad but if you like it great not to get too off topic but that's how i feel about lord of the rings i love the movies i absolutely love them i have a bajillion lord of the rings tattoos but i don't like the books and so just because it's a classic doesn't mean it's going to be um objectively good to everybody and if you'd like to see a positive review of it go to my channel i just put out like two gushing videos on lord of the rings uh but i i absolutely understand people who put it down the one criticism that really bugs me with lord of the rings that people say is uh some people say like the writing like they they can't read it anymore and i'm like it's not shakespearean right you can read it if you don't like how it's written fine but i just don't like the word can't being applied to it yeah no i 100 agree i think like this similarly is harder to read but i think the lord of the rings is yeah it's not like shakespeare we're like what do these words mean i don't know there's poetry breaks and all that stuff it's i understand that's not gonna be everyone's cup of tea yeah and especially the simarillion if you just read the first couple chapters i not only get i totally endorse just being like that's not for me there's literal begets in there it's and if you push past all that it can get really interesting but you have to have a deep love of middle earth i think to get into it i think so that's like the 201 or 301 level of love but all right i've never heard of it like that but that works okay so one sample of your channel is fantasy deep dives and fantasy news where do you see the genre of fantasy and books or film because i know you do a lot of like show reviews and stuff too um so where do you see it headed in the coming years any big trends well specifically related to news we have some bad news coming down the road um that's that a lot of the clickbait websites that just make stuff up are realizing that fantasy fans are a valuable market to lie to and so i in the last just since i started fantasy dudes remind you two years ago-ish i have noted a tremendous spike in the number of headlines that just lie i saw one recently where it was like winds of winter release date confirmed and it's just no it's not if you read the article it's like f six paragraphs going over why would which is taking so long and at the end it's like we don't know when it's coming out same thing with rothfusses uh doors of stone a lot of stuff around like just baiting headlines and lore things like six things you didn't know about this stephen king book and it's like did you know pennywise is a clown level stuff uh so it's just gonna be a lot more of that and i i it's gonna make my job a lot harder that's one thing i've seen but in terms of the genre so pulling away from the news that's just something that i've recently been looking at a lot fantasies as everyone has noted myself a million times over included the the cultural gates have opened because no longer are the big five the only keepers the self-publishing boom has been a godsend to fantasy the self-publishing boom has been a godsend to fantasy now we're getting fantasy by every possible inspired culture and i think we're seeing right now because people are going oh i can do south african inspired fantasy i can do uh you know saudi arabian history inspired fantasy india inspired fantasy we're seeing a lot of very clear reflections of those cultures and i think what we're going to see more a trend of not that we're not already seeing it we are but a greater trend of blending these cultures like we haven't seen before you know even my favorite series wheel of time blends a lot of cultures across the world but that's not super standard it's very typical to see like this is war of the roses inspired this is indian mythology inspired i'm excited to see i think we're going to have a great influx of just kind of blending uh melding and that's already happening in some instances where people you know i would say the green bone saga well it is clearly uh asian inspired there's also aspects of american culture in there and things like that so it's it's going to get a lot more hybridized more often not that it has people are going to be commenting like these 10 books that are already that i know i agree dune is right over my shoulder i'm aware but it's going to be the standard i believe and things like oh a direct parallel war of the roses like songwriting fire is uh will become less common in my opinion and i think it's really interesting because specifically so i'm very involved in like the agenting sphere and a lot of things that agents will ask for they're like i want non-western fantasy whatever like non-western inspired and it's okay if it still is to some extent but personally i would like some more mixed stories more mixed cultures more um cultures we haven't heard of before so that in my opinion i'm very excited about that potential trend a big one too i'm actually working on a video about this no one sniped the idea is about the reframing of who is the villain because we've very often seen fantasy works inspired by like you know these people in history that are viewed as good people but as we become more informed about history the more we learn about historic figures the more we see like oh no they're actually awful people i think we're going to have that's why i think we've had this influx of morally grey quote-unquote characters because we're realizing there haven't been these like julius caesar was an awesome man no he wasn't he butchered and slaughtered tens of thousands of people and so i think there's going to be a lot more of that and it's because we're having a much more realistic view of who we are my in conclusion for a lot of the research i've been doing is we're going to see a lot of reframing as more like you know america is still fairly imperialist a lot of ways we're going to see a lot of reframing of like you think you're the good guys you're the bad guys situations i mean hell i was just living in columbus and it was a pretty big issue while i was there that we're living in a city named after a guy who caused genocide so there's going to be a lot of that and i look forward to it because it's a conversation that isn't being had in the real world and so i'm interested to see how people will fictionalize it agreed because i feel like fiction is the forefront of a lot of these cultural discussions and stuff so it is it's fascinating how that happens so let's move to the next question in your opinion how can fantasy authors stand out in a crowded space like you read tons and tons of books what makes a book stand out to you so it's a risky thing to try and do to be really stand out right i can think of two examples one that succeeds in one that kind of for me failed but still found success so i encourage people to take a left turn but just know you're gonna get more extreme reactions in my opinion in general one that didn't work that a lot of people loved but wasn't for me was never night i just was not the big fan of it because it's hyper stylized right it's right over your shoulder it but you'll agree it's very stylized writing it's standing out and i wouldn't i would never tell the author to write it any differently he realized a vision i respect that and i think you know if you want to see an example of how someone made creative choices i mean he's talking about a fresh suicide being sexy go where and there's like notations to the bottom of these weird things it's great uh but me reading it i wanted to smash it into my head like it just wasn't for me i think what jay kristoff did and that's something that's really important is it's it's a standout thing that he genuinely loved writing you can tell he had fun with that and it works for him now one that did work for me extremely extremely well is uh where is it can i grab it all right it's too far away i'm not gonna get up uh so this is an older example but it stands out is his dark materials so this is kind of the other side of it so jay kirstoff was like stylization i didn't love the stylization there it can work but it's risky territory historic materials it stands out because it was written as an argument almost and i think a lot of writing that really stands out from the crowd is coming from that place or an author has a specific gripe a specific idea a specific message and they write the crap out of it so this was a critique of things like narnia and it was more of this religious conversation he was having and whether you agree with it or not it causes talk right because people are going to be going and deep why this guy succeeded why he failed and i like this angle of standing out a bit more so if you're a person who wants their fantasy book to stand out i bet there's something in your real life you're really passionate about an argument you have with your relatives and thanksgiving a lot right whether it's about whether it's religion or politics what have you if you write a story with that it will pop and you can even take it to an example not a lot of people think of this song of ice and fire as i mentioned that's a political book because it's more of the roses i think it stands out for its political nuance because it's directly inspired by a real-life reflection that george r martin was obsessed with and he wanted to bring to the page so finding that inner obsession i think often really works um it really stands out that's why the book i'm writing i'm doing something about you know ideas of manifest destiny ideas of the right to conquer other people which is something that humans believed for a long long time a lot of the people we thought it was good guys were actually just invaders and i want to dive into the evil that can be brought about from people having this idea that they have the right to someone else's land and someone else's culture is somehow less it's really depressing but it's also something i'm really really interested in and i think it has a lot of opportunity for like nuances and lots of different characters and discussions of what is right like you know how do you define what right is so which i think is an important discussion to have in fiction yeah so if you want to go the direction of having an argument i'm gonna be there i'm gonna read it that's my personal taste if you're gonna go the argument of talking about like a notation on the bottom of your text and all these complex metaphors i'm probably gonna give you a negative review but that's just me and but take away the takeaway is to be okay with negative reviews which is something i've really been peddling recently negative reviews is just some guy's opinion no matter who it is what are some of your favorite and least favorite fantasy tropes and why my least favorite of all time is probably damsel in distress because it's the ultimate de-agensifying it's just taking someone's agency completely away i saw one person recently making a joke about action movies in like the 80s there's a spot on a woman's arm that if you grab her she can't fight back because oh no she's grabbed by the spot in her arm it's just like that clear kind of crap and it can be both it can be guys it can be anything i don't believe when someone is taken hostage they are just completely shut down and useless and i don't think they should be written that way unless you know if they have a literal gun to their head sure but there should be more things especially if they're like in a tower for nine years are they really just sitting there so that's probably my least favorite there's a few others that drive me insane uh poorly executed love triangles instant love i do not enjoy the trope i would say this is a trip because of how it happens so much just told that people are friends and we never see them be friends oh they're friends okay they haven't talked to each other in six chapters and what they say is like hey are they friends yeah i have a more detailed conversation with my cat this morning but i'd say my favorite ones that have stood the test of time i love a good evil king or queen just evil rulers oh yeah 100 magic dark lords i'm a fan of evil landscapes i know that sounds corny but like if there is an evil like dark forest or like the abandoned swamps or whatever i'm there i want to camp out at it i want to get spooky let's go and then i would say injecting random horror elements is fantasy it's kind of a it's not undertalked about trope but so many fantasy books just have like horror sequences in them and they always drag me in i love them i deeply love that especially because so many fantasy authors are so creative with how they can make orcs suddenly horrifying for a little bit i totally agree on the jamesland distress trope and enso love both those things that drive me nuts i like the twist with insta lust where you're like i'm instantly attracted to this person but love does not develop instantly sort of a thing one of my uh big gripes with insta love is it's often adults like it's people who are well they're in their 20s or something like that as a character and i'm like i would i get i'm totally fine with insta love if they're like 16 as a character right because that's we were all in high school we know what that's like i'm gonna give you a promise ring all that crap um when it's adults that i'm very unforgiving we're just like this is just no are you getting value out of this video if so click the thumbs up button and if you haven't already hit the subscribe button and ring the bell so you are notified every time i upload a video just like this one how could fantasy authors best approach world building what are your top world building tips so i think as many fantasy authors have shown before whether it's rebecca quang and the poppy war or george r martin in the song of western fire or robert jordan wheel of time find real life situations in history that fascinates you and they don't have to match up timeline wise with your world because you can reskin it to be whatever timeline you want to be you can look at modern day issues in certain countries and then just plop them down in whatever timeline you like so don't think you have to like go like i'm flintlock so let's find imperial stuff going on in that area no but then just look study the crap out of it study it hard really learn the nuance and then pull completely out and go to another one that interests you and do the same thing and then pick and choose because you as a creative get this amazing awesome ability to go i like that i like that i don't like that and i like that and you put it together and then i would recommend once you do it once basically burn what you've done to the ground just don't look at it for a while start again and redo it and approach it from a whole other angle so if you kind of start at the top like he's the rulers i want and i want to build down from there go over the other way around start from the geographical standpoint start for like the lower class and build up and make sure you hit all those details because it can cause some real disconnect if you only write your world from the perspective of your characters who are like the noble class you're not going to think certain things through and that's where actually i'm going to see a lot of the kind of holes in certain fantasy worlds that just don't quite add up or it's like oh we have a heavy king rule and he's very like has all the power yet we're talking to the lower class folks and they seem to have freedom and free speech and all this stuff and there's a free press going on that doesn't line up so it really you need to justify you need the details and really think about the ramifications of what you're pulling from and then do it multiple times through that way you'll have a clean well thought out and structured world and this planning process depending on the vision if you want to do something small it could take a few months if you want something big there's people who develop lifetimes to developing their fantasy world so it's entirely up to what your vision is but that's my biggest advice because i can tell you uh it's not something i often put in reviews because a lot of people say it's nitpicks but i see a lot of little things where it's like that wouldn't exist here if you have this other thing as well that's probably my biggest advice i can get is just a lot of people like they'll do six drafts of their script but they do one draft of their world and i'm like that's not no that's a really interesting point and i've never heard it phrased that way then would you suggest basically outlining your world several times before drafting so like for authors like don't even begin the drafting process outlined the world a handful of times i liked how you said like from top level down and then from you know bottom level up or however you want to phrase it but do you recommend doing that first before even touching your manuscript itself that's i mean some that's going to depend on so many different types of writers i don't like being the person who says this is the way to write i just don't believe because the creative process is going to be entirely dependent on what kind of brain you got and you're not going to me uh so but in general i personally spent roughly three years planning the world i'm writing my book in before i wrote a line and then i even now to help build out this world i've been writing short stories that just randomly take place in it so i know 50 years ago there was a battle at some point over here to help resolve this war i'm gonna go write that it's completely unrelated to the main timeline i'm writing um and that kind of came from inspiration from sorry i know you don't like him from tolkien because he his his entire process of coming from middle earth was i like writing languages these languages need a world i guess i should put a story here and that to me is why it works so well because he just started from this point of realizing the world so if that's a big concern of you approach it from an alternative angle doesn't that be a language does not be even necessarily history even could be geography just think it through and then come at it again from another side the way i've heard it phrased i'm gonna say it poorly is so building a world is like sitting on a branch and you see all these things go off right because branch is just branching indefinitely and when you write from one perspective you're writing it one start in that branching and so you can see really clearly what's ahead of you but behind you is this blur of just all these tangents so you need to pick up and place down in as many different locations as you can to get the full picture because your world already exists you just haven't totally seen it yet i know that sounds weird but it's true awesome metaphor and i loved it and now i'm wondering line level wise how like how do you think authors can insert the world building because like you know there's the the classic info dump so like let me pause the scene we have four paragraphs of like world building and whatever what are your thoughts on prose line level incorporating world building that's gonna come down to preference of author reader to me i like the way jordan does world building where he'll just be like stopping the narrative here's three pages on dresses let's go and i'm fine with that but other people hear that they're like revolted by it so i don't want to give like a solid here's the way to do it because it's just who you're trying to appeal to if you want the epic guys you want to get the malazan crowd the wheel of time crowd yeah you're going to need to probably halt your narrative because the people who like those books like to just have a world fleshed out for them but if you're trying to write something a little faster you know dresden the jade city then you're going to want to maybe crank it up and incorporate the world building more cleanly into just the pace keeps moving to me that comes down to the audience you're trying to capture specifically because i mean let's be honest there's some people who they need a pace that never stops and there's other people that they're willing to read dune so you've interviewed a few best-selling uh science fiction fantasy authors brian sanderson and christopher pellini are just two of those top of mind so what is one of the biggest pieces of writing advice you've gotten from those interviews uh jim butcher had an amazing this isn't writing advice but it was a story he told that has motivated me immensely in my writing and that's uh essentially he wrote the dresden files a now i don't even know how many book series uh well past most others out of spite because someone told him he couldn't do it and i found that to be an incredible motivator and i think it's a really solid thing to tell other people if you don't write it all the people who told you you couldn't approve right so you want to prove them wrong prove them wrong go and here and as i said you don't need four stars on goodreads you don't need a good glowing review from me or murph or iwriterly here or anybody you don't need to care about that if you're published if you have a book out i don't so if i give you a negative review all you need to do is comment haha i have a book out you don't and you've won a lot of people don't talk about spite as being a motivator but i think it's actually like a really good motivator when i studied writing in a college and one of my professors told me i couldn't write and i remember being like screw you boo boo i'm gonna do everything that you told me i can't do and i'm gonna do it well and so i think it can be a motivator for people which um you know it's okay sometimes to harness some of those negative emotions to make a positive thing in my opinion you know it's like two lefts don't or two wrongs don't make a right i'm sitting here like yeah but a lot of anger makes me successful so i'm gonna pull from those wrongs i'm gonna pull those insults and just steer myself in the right direction so another staple on your channel is book reviews and book reviews are a bit of a controversial topic and the writing and authortube community space and some authors feel that they cannot review other authors books negatively because they're essentially like peers while other people believe that sharing authentic opinions is what is most important and obviously you do a lot of book reviews on your channel so what are your thoughts on book reviews should authors review other authors books and if so how can they go about it in a respectful way so i've had to develop this very thick skin no leash given mentality of if you can't take a negative review don't watch a review and it's never on the reviewer's shoulders to hold back their opinion on their thoughts now if an author is not comfortable no one's making you review a book i'm okay with that but if you're going to do a review you need to be honest because people are going to spend their money based off what you're saying and lying is not acceptable because people need to not waste their money and one of the big things you need to do is establish your tastes and opinions and if you're skipping out on big books because you know that author or you think it'd be rude to interview them people aren't going to know your taste that well because you're not reading what's big but everyone's reading what everyone can use as a touchstone to understand where you are coming from if you are comfortable doing it do it but you have to do it right uh if you go take a half measure then you're a bad reviewer that's essentially like it sounds mean but you can't do a half measure there because you're making people not understand so i personally when it comes to like should brent weeks review the next abercrombie book i think hell yes because he's a fellow fantasy author who can give opinions that are better informed than the likes of me or any booktuber out there who hasn't written and become a best-selling author because he got an insight that we don't and i think as every as long as everyone's pretty grown up everyone's pretty okay with it we can all say wonderful uh i don't have issue with someone saying this is a good and or bad thing uh because they can understand it's coming from a genuine place of help like you're trying to be helpful when you review a book you're actually coming from a i'm trying to help i'm trying to give a perspective and you can honestly say your respective sucks and i'm not changing that's great uh it's it's a conversation and i don't think authors should be forced to do one way or the other but it's just a matter of if they're do it do it right yeah and i think especially for you your platform um at least i think the foundation was around book reviews um correct me if i'm wrong okay um and i think you know having authentic and genuine book reviews is really really important if that is part of your platform maybe other people are like i'm not comfortable reviewing other authors books because they're my peers then you know then don't do it and do something else you are also working on a novel um if you're comfortable could you tell us a little bit about it and then um kind of separate topic but how has your youtube channel impacted your writing journey so i would have my book published by now if i wasn't doing youtube videos but it also wouldn't sell because no one would know about it so it's uh that's the biggest impact i'd be done if it was my full-time job but now i'm able to write four hours a week because it's not my full-time job so it's it's a lot of i'm trying to get there uh kind of mentality um but my novel is a fantasy novel it's flintlock fantasy meaning there's guns and muskets and i'm actually the part of their steam engines and things along those lines and it's uh about an empire that is directly ruled by god because i think it's pretty interesting that we always have these religions in fantasy but the gods are always abstract and distant they're never like on the ground or if they are you have to summon them and all these things my thing is no god came down from the sky and he went you guys are screwing up i'm going to guide you and show you the right way to go and so the question i'm kind of trying to ask at the center of it is is that worth it is it okay to give up the ability to fail as a humanity if in the meantime you're giving up your free will is gone because god is telling you this is the way to go and if you don't do that you're gonna fail um and i'm also going into ideas of obviously as i said manifest destiny you know imperialism age of exploration and obviously my view of this is fairly cynical i don't think it's a good thing and i'm going into a lot of different periods of history to research this kind of stuff because i want to base it off real events that have happened real mentalities people have had the philosophy behind someone who's willing to go massacre some other group it's really dark it's really depressing uh but i'm not trying to get too crim dark while also not shying away from it and i'd say the greatest challenge i've had is you know i'm writing from the standpoint of evil we're following people who are serving this evil regime and i'm trying to keep them human it's really difficult to show like if someone's willing to do this awful stuff they're still going to go home and kiss their wife hug their kids and it feels almost wrong to do that from a writing standpoint and i'm also not trying to forget that they are evil heartless bastards in a lot of way always so the narrative is taking off from there and that is the i'm kind of lying to you i'm kind of not pitch because there's twists i'm writing that i can't talk about uh so that's what i've learned to do and an author actually gave me advice to do is have your initial pitch be as sexy as it can sound and also a lie so there you go you had mentioned something before about basically having time to write like four hours per week and i think one misconception about folks who watch youtube content and don't create content is the sheer amount of time that it takes to create a lot of content and they're like oh but of course you're gonna write and i feel like as soon as i became a youtuber my writing time was like cut in half like you know because half the time you're putting into like i don't know if you script or how you film or whatever but like the whole process of creating content how have you been able to find a balance i guess between writing and youtube honestly i have not that's the biggest problem i'm probably trying to overcome right now i have not overcome that balance and it's why my writing is going so slow i say okay for two hours this day i'm gonna write and then i sit down and i can't think of anything or i'm not totally blocked and that's when i just do more research by the way if you find yourself the writer's block research do other things write something unrelated that's a great way to get past it yeah it's something i'm still struggling with and i need to honestly cut down on creating so much content i put out an extra video today that i released a couple hours ago just because i was like oh i need to do a reaction to this trailer because people want to know my thoughts on it and it's related to discworld and it's a very controversial one but then after i put out the trailer i was like i could have done two hours of writing right there easy instead of doing that it's i struggle with it because i'm addicted to the youtube right now i'm addicted to getting views getting money getting clicks getting likes getting comments and being pulling back from that to the very stagnant sitting in a chair writing is difficult so i can't give you an answer because i haven't conquered that beast oh and no that's totally fair and i think i'm in a similar place too just because there's like this immediate gratification of youtube where you upload a video and it's done after a couple of hours or and you get the you know people talking and you can talk with them in the comments versus as you described writing a book it's um it's even more of a marathon i guess and versus like a sprint sort of thing so i think there's like that immediate gratification pull with youtube content versus writing at least that i found and so i found that i was just curious like how you manage the two because i feel like i never i'm always trying to manage it and it's never quite where i want it to be well to anyone thinking about being a content creator i i gotta let you know you are also volunteering to be addicted to something because it is it's been shown in studies now to trigger the same parts of the brain that other legitimate drugs do get ready for that oh the joys of being a youtuber last question of related to books and things um if you don't mind i'm curious have you thought to the point where like are you do you want to try and publish this book that you're working on um have you thought about how like if you're like i would like to query agents i want to go self-publishing or like i am so far out i haven't even thought about that sort of a thing it's probably the most single stress and anxiety-inducing question i have around the book right now it's okay i'm behaving you sent me the questions in advance i was okay with it no it's totally fine because the genuine answer right now is i don't know and i'm okay with that and i want to announce other people it's also okay to not know and i would recommend not getting bogged down in that until you at least have a lot of progress in your book because let's be honest if you're not near done it's not really something to worry about in my opinion and it's one of those things that can seem like it's uber important to make a decision on and it's not it's not yet it's something you can put in the distance and so my answer to your question i'm sorry to subvert it in like an obnoxious way is to be okay with not knowing and when i start making the when i start looking into it i will make videos about it so that is what i will do the only thing i know for sure i'm i'm not going to do is uh hybrid publishing i've ruled out that's the only one where i'm like ah i don't want to do that because how do you define hybrid publishing from what i saw uh it was essentially them being like we'll publish it for you but more of the cost is on you when we take more of the profit so no that's not the case correct yeah don't do that um it's called vanity presses um it depends like there's different verbiage um the reason i ask is hybrid authors are considered authors that self-publish and traditionally publish so i hear hybrid publishing i'm always like could you clarify what you mean but yeah vanity presses they can be good if like usually like if you're a business owner and you don't have time to like to learn how to self-publish or to pursue publishers it can be helpful but like if you're like a fiction author a lot of times they'll take your rights and they'll make you pay for it and it's just this whole um i don't recommend it i'm just saying sure i don't recommend it and one thing that i've actually been told by multiple people i know in the industry now is hold on to your film and game and all that rights like it's your bloodline so i am and no one's taking that from me yes agreed i think audio rights are a little trickier now because audio books are so popular that you can't necessarily keep those as much anymore but i agree keep as many of your rights as you can because they are worth a lot if you suddenly get that wave of success and like oh a studio wants to make it but you're like i have to ask daddy over here that's a bad thing yeah yeah it can be a bit tricky now do you have any final tips for authors looking to start a platform on youtube do what we're doing right now and collaborate a lot of the biggest bumps i've ever gotten are from collaborations with people and i also have made great friends that way so yes collaborate you'll also get amazing advice you'll have people that will happily teach you i don't know a single youtuber i've met who isn't happy to take five minutes to show you how they learned something and the best way to approach it so reach out you know maybe to smaller people at first maybe just some of the medium-sized people hell reach out to me if i have time to see your email i'll respond to it it's a community and that's something you have to really take to the forefront of it is you are getting involved with an established community you're not some outsider if you try to be that you're not going to succeed and that was my last official question so for our viewers who want to keep in touch with you where can they find you online just put daniel green on youtube i hope i still pop in there uh if i'm at daniel b green on twitter my middle initials would be a lot of people think that's some kind of joke no my my initial is b and i think i'm d green something on instagram i don't know in the description below thank you i appreciate it and that's where you can find me thank you so much yes and thank you so much for joining me today and let me pick your brain i really appreciate it anytime thank you so much to daniel again for coming on my channel and letting me pick his brain i had so much fun but be sure to hop on over to daniel's channel to check out the collab that we did for his channel where i get interviewed and answer a bunch of questions about authortube and traditional publishing and self-publishing and all that so thank you so much to daniel for having me on and definitely go check that out guys if that sounds like your thing and now it's time for the question of the day what are your thoughts on book reviews if you are an author should authors review other authors books share your thoughts in the comments below and now it's time to announce the winner of this week's pre-order giveaway for the cyborg tinkerer the winner of this week's pre-order giveaway is this person you'll be going home with divinity falling by noor zikra thank you so much to everyone who's pre-ordered a copy of the cyborg tinkerer and stay tuned when another winner is announced in an upcoming video thank you for tuning into this episode of i writerly writing fantasy and how to stand out in a crowded space and interview with youtuber daniel green if you want to support what i do join me on patreon if you want to stay up to date with everything i'm doing subscribe to my newsletter when you subscribe you'll also receive free copies of how to format your manuscript for submission which is a word document template a query checklist a self-publishing checklist and a book marketing checklist if you have questions or requests for future videos please do drop them in the comments below the cyborg tinkerer is available for pre-order and hardcover paperback ebook and audiobook on most major retailers if you want to check that out the link is in the description below that's it for today as always keep writing [Music] you

Channel: iWriterly

Views: 21,285

Rating: 4.9525156 out of 5

Keywords: writing tips, best writing advice, writing advice, daniel greene, fantasy genre, fantasy books, fantasy writing, writing fantasy, authortube, booktube, fantasy writing tips, fantasy writing advice, fantasy writing tropes, fantasy world building, scifi, science fiction, how to grow on youtube, meg latorre, iwriterly

Id: Rf-QD7qjtr8

Length: 44min 6sec (2646 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 21 2020