Teaching Writing Is Hard - Brandon Sanderson's Writing Lecture #1 (2025)
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- Опубліковано 7 лют 2025
- Brandon Sanderson talks about how teaching writing can often be hard where as writing your first book will be your best teacher.
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These shorts are so damn fascinating. For someone who doesn’t have all the time in the world to watch the whole lecture atm, this is very nice.
Even if you can only watch the full lecture bit by but I definitely recommend it
@ definitely plan on it when I have some more time. Busy time of year for me unfortunately.
Writing is like cooking. Its between science and art. There are methods, techniques etc, but you will never learn without getting your hands dirty and finding what works for you.
Is kind of funny you get to that conclusion, given how Sanderson compares being a good writer with being a chef
@ernestorodriguez5117 Really? That's funny! I found the analogy through my other interest, which is Business Valuation (i.e. Valueing stocks). A pretty famous professor has the same analogy there, that valuation is neither science nor art, but a craft like cooking :)
@@AndreGR93 actually, you can see Brandon itself saying it in previous shorts of this lecture. It´s not the same analogy as yours, but the paralelism is there
Eh, I wouldn't say it's between the two; it's definitely an art.
Sculpting also benefits from knowing some science/technique, but I wouldn't call it a hybrid either.
I once read a series of interviews of a number of famous authors. They were all asked for advice on writing. The *only* common denominator that I could find was this,
Write. Keep writing and then write some more.
I do love the toolbox approach to teaching writing. So many people try to find the formula for writing the perfect book, and it just doesn't exist. I forget who said it, but when your car is running fine, you don't need to have a wrench in hand.
That point about knowing which tools to ignore is massive
That applies to a lot of things, not just writing. Once you figure out your work flow you'll know what to look at and use and what just doesn't work for you.
This is why in trades you don't pair two different journeymen together. They'll butt heads
Low taper fade.
I have brainrot, it's sad. I'll fix that.
Just like music, painting, sculpting, ceramics and so on...
It's really nice to know by heart all of the techniques, tools and instruments, materials and their interactions, color theory, history of art and all the great masters but if you never put your hand on the canvas, your piano or a bloc of clay to practice your art... 😅
Do not consider writing any different than these other arts.
I have realized this in the last year. I was taught how to write a very specific way that doesn’t work for me, and now I know which tools to ignore. Not bad tools, just doesn’t work for me. GREAT point!
I wrote my first book at the age of 19, revised it and deleted 50% of content. I wrote it again, finished it at age 22 (2021-22 were not my years). I got some beta readers to read and comment. Now I'm on my way to finish the third iteration of that book in its finest possible form before summer, and hopefully publish it
This is true you just get better the more you write. Just keep writing, writing teaches you. I'm hoping these help me focus on writing more and get a little better and motivate me to do it more.😊
The most valuable things I've learned about skills in general but particularly when it comes to sports and arts is that you can't just sit down and hear someone talk and become good at something. This sounds obvious to some but it was eye-opening for me when my HEMA fencing instructor explained it to me. He's a very good teacher, which is already rare, but he also knows that words and practice will only get me so far. I've become quite good in less than half a year because he's had me just fight a bunch of people over and over. You learn by doing, and the purpose of a teacher is to observe, collaborate, and give you constructive criticism and direction, but THOUGHTFUL action is the best teacher.
This is 100% true writing has taught me more than I ever thought it would.
I have gained motivation and am now leaving UA-cam shorts to keep writing my story. Thank you so much
the most frustrating thing when starting is when you have solid concepts, but lack the technical skills yet to make the words on paper fun to read. That takes a fair bit of time to develop.
Thank you for breaking these into shorts!!!
I've been on the fence about taking my ideas for comics and writing novels instead. Your videos have lit a spark of sorts to give it a try. I think even if writing novels isn't for me it could help me visualize and flesh out the details that I see in my mind before committing to All That Drawing 😂❤
Do both! What you learn in one place will help you in another place, if you let it. Even if you do only one of these for a little while, the experience will carry you for your whole career.
Brandon is such a gift
Fantastic point. At the end of the day, unlike something like painting or sculpting or music where there's a huge amount of technical skill required before you can express yourself artistically, with writing most of that is front loaded.
By the time you're considering you're first book you know how to write. You understand your own language, you know grammar rules. What would usually be the biggest barrier to entry is done so the next step is to write.
A one page short story. A 5 page story. A 30 page story. Maybe the same thing but expanded each time. Maybe the same scene but from different points of view. Maybe you try writing in first person and third person. Maybe you're using very flowery language then very simple language. Emotional and detached and clinical writing. Slow buildup and in media res. Lots of dialogue, an internal monologue and just pure atmosphere with no talking.
Because each of this can work, because each is a tool, because each can make sense to use, unless you try a bunch of stuff and actually apply it to the story you're trying to tell you'll never get a proper feel for what works and what doesn't.
And that's all before the actual story part of the story. Who's doing what, when, where, why and how are things people can help you with, but only to a degree. Others can give you an idea, maybe even an outline, or they can help you find and plug holes in logic or continuity, but there's a point where you're just writing down someone else's book (which is legitimate if you're writing something like a biography, but it's less desirable if you're writing fiction)
oof
My brother has been writing a book for the last three years and never finished it. He’s written the whole thing over a couple of times now because he keeps going back and revising it or slightly changing plot points as he improves.
That's probably his student story. What I mean is that most of the writers have one or many stories that never would be published, cause they never cease to revisite them and "upgrade it". What I suggest your brother is to let down that story, get over it, and write new ones. Once he has finished some new stories and even published, then he can come back to that story to give the final revision. Is never good for a writer to sink in one story for so much. I understand if he haven't finished the story. The most important thing is to finish the stories. But he actually finished, so he has no excuse to move on and get ready to publish
I learned so much writing my first book. I made so many mistakes.
Te amo Brandon ❤❤
Writing is so personal that is like teach Da Vinci how to paint Monalisa
Good. Great, even.
Orson Scott card once said you will learn more by writing 100,000 word novel than from any writing class.
They put you in the MARB? How dare they!
Why dont they put him in a class that has like triple this seating?
This is honestly most tasks.... It's actually insanely hard to teach most skills, people have to just do it over and over..
Adoooonalsium
Lucky students!
In a sense all teaching is merely stewarding others into their own understanding
and this is why ai writing doesn't work
Me the moment Brandon said Writing requires work: 😭
Just like any other thing
You should learn all about writing and forget it all by the writing.
Writing is basically engineering
You need experience to finish a project, probably more than that project gives you, so you accept that and gather more experience, for you to use that experience later to finish the project 1 Better and 2 Faster than you could have before
While both art and engineering are things everyone can figure out, you pay people for their experience which allows them to have better and often quicker solutions
If you don't have that experience, you can still do it, it just will take longer and be less neat
ah yes Mr. "the Mormon church has not harmed me personally so everyone else's suffering is not my business"