Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Oy! Folks! Brandon Sanderson is posting all of his creative writing lectures online this semester!! I watched the first two and I can't tell you how excited I am about this. FREE WRITING WORKSHOP!! By BRANDON SANDERSON!! Methinks I may have died and gone to heaven.

http://www.writeaboutdragons.com/home/brandon_w2012/

Does anyone want to watch and share notes/thoughts/impressions with me?? We can totally make this thread a workshop mania share-a-thon. Anyone want to play with me??

My favorite quote from Lecture 1 is this: Inspiration is working until something clicks.

I saw that as well - I've only watched the first lesson so far (at work I might add - time is the prize and curse of the ingenious) and a fair chunk is a rehash of lectures I've seen him give at JordonCon, but I assume this is his general opening spiel.

But I found a real nugget in there about how to give good critique (and if you picked up on that pun - yes it was intended). It literally pinpoints the exact problem I've had with giving critiques myself. I'll listen to this bit a few dozen times in the future I reckon, digest all the nuance in there.

He's a very engaging dude. You listen to his writing excuses podcasts?

Yeah, I watched the first one. It's definitely nice for those of us not living anywhere near him.

Hillsy wrote:You listen to his writing excuses podcasts?

I must have been living under a rock or something. I'd heard about it, a little, but never even ventured over there. I know, I don't understand how it could have happened, either. But now I have the first 'season' bookmarked for perusing and they're on my RSS feed.

This afternoon I'm gonna watch the third lecture over at writeaboutdragons. I'm so excited I'm about to burst.

(Yeah, it doesn't take much to get me excited.)

Yeah it's a pretty brilliant podcast - they trawl over the same old ground every now and then, but for 15 minutes a week for like 5 years that's going to happen. There's some absolute nuggets in there - the one with Mary Robinette Kowal talking about puppetry relating to writing (about series 3 I think) is quite brilliant - but yeah, worth listen to the lot of them!

Yeah I've just cleared lecture 2. Lecture 3 tomorrow then I guess, I can listen while chasing numbers round a spreadsheet easy enough...=0). Was surprised to find out I'm actually an outliner, apparently - always thought I was a discovery writer. Huh!?

Hillsy wrote:Was surprised to find out I'm actually an outliner, apparently - always thought I was a discovery writer. Huh!?

I did the same thing. I used to think I was a total pantser (discovery writer) but over the past year or so noticed that I'm gravitating a bit more towards the outliner. Now I'm in-between and leaning towards being an architect writer more than I ever thought I would. (Though what got me into the mess I'm in with my current WIP was a hardcore case of "Wouldn't It Be Cool Syndrome".)

Since I do have a bare-bones outline when I'm writing, I found the advice of working backwards from the coolest point and figuring out what needs to happen to make it the most powerful it can be pretty awesome advice. It isn't earth-shattering but it was like "huh" and a little light bulb went off over my head. I'm gonna give that advice a try right now, as I have some pretty cool stuff I'm working towards in my new third act of this story.

Thank you for posting about this!

Sounds cool, I will have to check it out!

I just checked out the first one and will definitely be checking out the rest. Thanks for posting this -- I would never have found this on my own (I'm bad at internet browsing.)

My favourite quote would be "getting published is not about luck." It goes against everything I've ever been told and makes me feel slightly relieved, partially because I wouldn't consider myself the luckiest of all people

I'll have to check it out sometime too.

You'd have hated one of the stories I'd read about getting a job, then. One famous one involves a hiring manager taking a stack of resumes, lifting half of them and dumping them into the trash and saying "I don't like working with unlucky people."

Holy buckets, Batman! Must check it out - I knew about his podcasts, but not the entire lecture series. Thanks for the heads up!

Wow, I can not believe how much stuff he called me on in the gardeners v. architects bit! I'm definitely more of a gardener. Great stuff.

ALL RIGHT!! I'm glad others are as excited as I am. Hopefully we can get some awesome conversations going!

Has anyone watched Lecture 3 yet? I was pretty impressed with the Pyramid of Distraction theory. As he was using the example of the dog to make descriptions more concrete I was thinking "okay, so big black dog. That's more concrete." But when he pulled out his example of a more concrete, heavy-lifting description - I was astounded. Now THAT was a heck of a description! I've heard about making your descriptions do double-duty before (thanks, Margo!) but this was the most poignant example of it I've ever seen. Ten words that show more about the world than I'd thought a short sentence could do. Wow. That sure got my mind cranking.

Also the reminder about using all five senses, and how multiple senses make a description more concrete, was great.

(And I don't know about you, but I am so craving some gummy bears right about now!!)

What did you all think?

dios4vida wrote: I did the same thing. I used to think I was a total pantser (discovery writer) but over the past year or so noticed that I'm gravitating a bit more towards the outliner. Now I'm in-between and leaning towards being an architect writer more than I ever thought I would.

I seem to copy a lot of what Sanderson does actually. I tend to start with the "Roll Call of Cool" (tm), a list of perhaps a dozen scene's, conversations, character traits, ideas and whatnot. Then I build the world/magic systems/culture/tech/whatever to make everything possible. Within the Roll Call of Cool I've usually got a start and an end scene, so they go on the plot map. Then from there I pretty much just wing it and aim for whatever on my Cool List seems intuitively next. The scenes seem to pick up a flavour from the first few lines and sort of grow from.....

......actually maybe I'm really a Gardener.

Dang, I'm confused!

Nicole R wrote:I knew about his podcasts, but not the entire lecture series. Thanks for the heads up!

Same here. Thanks for the pointer!