Sanderson 2013.1 - Ideas & Brainstorming
Вставка
- Опубліковано 2 тра 2016
- Brandon Sanderson’s 2013 Semester at BYU: Creative Writing, Lecture 1
This video is a mirror of the materials posted by user writeaboutdragons. I’ve provided some notes with timestamps below, and occasional color correction. Enjoy!
AUDIO CUTS OUT FROM 29:46 UNTIL 31:20. Sorry, I am just mirroring the originals, I can’t get the sound back in there.
*Notes*
0:12 / Habits of being a writer
- Most of writing becomes instinctual and intuitive, not academic
- It takes practice; editors can gauge your skill quickly
4:59 / Learning your writing style
- Writers tend to fall between “gardeners” and “architects”
- A new writer should try both to see what works best
12:53 / Writing groups
- Learn how to give and receive criticism to make you a better writer
24:14 / Giving feedback
- Be descriptive: give response to writing, do NOT give solutions and try to be proscriptive
- Where you laughed, where you were confused, where you liked the character, where the character bored you, etc
- Keep book context in mind; genre might not be to your taste, but that doesn’t help the author
29:46 / AUDIO CUTS OUT
31:20 / AUDIO RESUMES
32:59 / Writing group problems
- Pacing is very hard to determine when reading chapter-by-chapter over weeks
- If one person notices something, it can make the whole group fixate on it, even if it is a small issue
34:17 / Writing group structure for the class
- Have someone specific in charge to time things
- Start with good things; then larger problems; then questions from the author
- Make it a discussion
45:14 / Ideas are cheap
- Skill as a writer is more important than ideas
- Good story mixes three things
- - Setting
- - Character
- - Plot
- When you have a few of each of these, you can start a story
49:46 / Brainstorming settings with the class to demonstrate how easy ideas are to generate
53:46 / Brainstorming technologies / magics with the class
55:09 / Brainstorming plot hooks with the class
1:02:26 / Brainstorming characters with the class
1:04:55 / Merging different sparks into a single story
1:20:13 / Questions from the class
Writing a 6-book, award-winning fantasy series just to win an internet argument is the ultimate level of petty and I'm 100% here for it.
you know what they say, most people make art either out of lust or out of spite
The "ninjas attack" line is made much funnier considering I just finished one of his books where ninjas suddenly attack.
lol
The kitsen?
@@juancamilocalvache451 this was a long time ago but I believe I was referring to the Dakhor monks from Elantris.
45:08 ideas, 47:49 good ideas, 49:44 brainstorming ideas, 1:04:17 combining ideas into stories.
"I'll have ninjas attack." As a discovery writer, this is far too accurate.
And i found another “edition” of brandons lectures. Ive watched the new one on his channel, camera panda, and write about dragons. Its never quite exactly the same. Some gold nugget hidden in each one. Neat to see how his classroom has been upgraded over time.
It's a running joke that in a few years his lectures are gonna be held in an arena 😂
Am i the only one feeling compelled to get my 1000 words by Monday?
The story Brandon refers to as "Slow Glass" is "Light of Other Days
" for those interested.
I was able to write 8k words in a week and I'm partially blind. But but but! I have been planning this book I'm working on since November so I was basically ready to write. And I had very little stuff that week so it doesn't really count. :D
I owe a lot of my practice skills to these lectures. Thank you so much for sharing! :)
One of my eyes was injured years back and today it's like looking through wax paper. Had to learn how to type without looking REAL fast , lol. PRO: I can type just under 100wpm - CON: I can't proofread without getting a headache!
Did you finish the book? :)
Audio picks back up at 31:20 ish
Felt like the important portion taken out of the story right in the middle of being told you have the powers of God but ---
@@nightbanegodnomadicdruid6698 yeah essentially lmao
Thanks.
That really sucks. We’ll never know what he said for that minute 😢
Fantastic Mr. Sanderson! I wish you had been my professor when I was in college.
For those of you who wanted to have a concise version of the stories featured:
[1] When a time-displaced dentist is forced into a seemingly Stone-Age African village, he must use the guidance of his late five year-old mentee's ghost to navigate how to connect with the tribe. Failure will have horrible implications for the future generations, as the dentist slowly recognizes that he wasn't sent backwards...
[2] When a hedonist bard is given the chance to look into his future, he is disgusted at how domestic and selfless he becomes, 60 years later. With his heterochromatic eyes, one for pyrotechnics and the other for breath-control, he's sworn to reject enfeeblement. His future self will not take that lying down, as being able to see end doesn't mean you've seen the journey.
Goofy story. I was more into the stone age African dentist. Like there was dentistry in ancient Egypt. I’m sure stone age people got cavities and needed some teeth removed or someone to check on them etc. So you can just study the history of dentistry and find things to bring to the story. The revenge part can come from that shaman kid whose tribe was brutally murdered by the more “civilized” settler society. The dentist is from that society. The kid got captured as a slave and somehow ended up with the dentist who needed an apprentice and helper. He recognizes the importance of dental hygiene and wants to improve the lives of all people. Kid is set on revenge and plans to murder all the people of that society (that is more like a group of different tribes that form pseudo city state settlements. Slowly kid learns of the job and sees the doctor as a miracle guy when he sees the miracles he does by healing people everyday. Kid starts seeing him as a father and doctor sees him as his son. Doctor is interested in his shaman ideas and kid helps him figure out a way to use anesthesia for his procedures. In the end, settlers get invaded by tribes tied to the kid’s old tribes. Kid is not murdered as they recognize him as the shaman kid. He’s taken back to his tribe and his shaman titles return as well as importance. But deep down he sees the backwardness of his people. So he quits his shaman title and becomes a dentist. And his teachings become known in the ancient world. The legacy he learned from that man of science during his captivity. lol
Would be Much better if the whole room was microphone up. But great...thanks Brandon!
The dude that told Jim to write pokemon and the lost roman legion must feel really stupid right now
He is so brilliant
I still think that pokemon couldn't possibly qualify as a bad idea, given that it's the most sold game.
Cartoon animals, stuffed into confined spheres by legal poachers. Forced to fight to exhaustion for sport.
@@nathelm8693 i know it's pretty dope isn't it
@@martinkanchev7569 Heck ya. I actually caught a Pokemon in rl, but it turned back into my neighbors cat when I stuffed it into a bag..
Impossible to hear any of the students. *sad face* Thanks Brandon for the awesome videos!
49:12 Is there a list somewhere with all those different types of plots?
TVTropes, but do be careful, you can sink hours into it
@@milospollonia1121 I know tvtropes, and yeah, this site is a MESS :q
Bet those baseball players wish they had an eraser.
TWIIIIIIIICE
What does the student suggest at 59:42? BS doesn't repeat it and sound full on doesn't catch what the student said.
Headphones blasting, I think it's: "revenge against your past self."
zmunk great, thank you. No wonder he was impressed.
Ok, ok.
yeah... give the kids a mic. lol. :P
This one never loads for me :(
this video doesn't play :\
2
i cannot do it with all the laptop keyboard tapping.
please find a way to fix the audio so that's turned way down, if possible.
It's important to hear the tapping on keyboards far more than you can hear questions being asked!
Good luck.
I'm sorry but WHAT is this person even typing?! I couldn't stop thinking of the Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone scene where Harry numbly writes every word Snape says 😅 Pay attention, dude!
Seriously. Must have been writing their memoire. The first few minutes could have been summed up with, "practice". Yet this student was burning a hole through their keyboard haha.
Scribing the lectures probably.
This Video is broken to me. It sounds like an interesting one. Please reupload or fix
I've contacted youtube to try and get this fixed. It worked for about a year, but I made no change and suddenly a month ago it broke. If they can't fix it, I'll re-upload.
zmunk sound cuts out randomly around the 30min mark, nothing major, but a few minutes of silence during an interesting topic
@@ger5956 That's probably why the cut is there. I've seen this sneaky type of censorship happening on UA-cam quite often. It also happens on Google Books: you can find scanned books in their archive that have blank pages or just portions of it. But not blank as if they were blank originally (then you would see the random "scanner dust" on them), but blank as if one took a brush tool in a photo editing program and painted all over the important details. There are also warped pages, or pages covered with hands (and again, not just random pages, but those most important ones; and it's totally intentional, because if you were given a job of scanning a book, and you covered up some page with your hand by accident, you would most likely just scan this particular page one more time, wouldn't you? :q )
@@bonbonpony There is no connection here LMAO. Cool it with the conspiracy theories, okay?
@@Luka1180 Not okay.
And it's not a conspiracy THEORY. I described what I found and experienced myself. If you don't believe me, that's your problem, not mine.