BRANDON: Guys, you get me back this week.
Yay!
CLASS: [cheering]
BRANDON: Don't sound too enthusiastic. This
week we are doing Q&A from the things you
turned in on world building. All right? Next
week we will start into character. We'll do
two weeks on character. Then we'll have two
weeks on the business of writing, and there's
probably a Q&A, time for a Q&A on character
in there. I don't know how many weeks we have
left. Isaac, how many weeks do we have left
of the class after this one?
ISAAC: Today is the 7th.
BRANDON: Thirteen, so there's six left? Ish.
If you're wondering, if you're already overachieving,
there is no final in this class. Don't worry
about that. We used to watch a movie and have
pizza for final, but then it just ran afoul
of so many people's plans and my plans usually
that we stopped doing that. I'm sorry.
CLASS: [moaning]
BRANDON: Aww! And then they have, like, don't
eat any food in the auditorium, so we don't
want to get in trouble, right?
CLASS: [laughing]
BRANDON: We're all law-abiding citizens. I
don't have a thing of water right over there.
All right let's go to your questions about
world building. By the way, there are questions
in here that aren't on world building. I usually
skip over those, and I'll try to have a just
general Q&A at the end for things we don't
get. But a lot of these are about character
and stuff that, theoretically, we will get
to as the class progresses.
First question asks, "What flaws do you have
that make you a better writer?" It's a very
good question. I'll try not to be insulted.
It's actually an excellent question because
looking at this sort of thing does really
help understand flaws and limitations and
things like that. I think naturally, as a
writer, one of my greatest strengths was also
one of my greatest flaws, which is often the
way it is. In fact, if you can write your
characters that way, it is usually a good
idea. For me, this was my ability to write
fast and my eagerness to work on new projects.
What this did during my early days as a writer
is it pulled me through a lot of books. I
got through those bad words, those terrible
words, that writers often have when they're
newer. I got to experiment a lot with stories.
I wrote 13 novels in 10 years. This was a
good strength to me. It helped me build confidence.
It helped me build momentum.
It was also a drawback in that I did not ever
learn revision. The biggest thing that held
me back from getting published was the ability
to take an okay or good story and turn it
into a great story. That is a separate and
important skill. Sometimes as a writer who--
there are some of you in this class that are
like me. You are overachievers in regards
to word counts.
One of the dangers of this is taking bad habits
and perpetuating them so long that it's that
much harder to break you out of those bad
habits later on, particularly prose-wise,
things like that. Writing with flabby prose,
writing with using the same three metaphors
over and over again, writing using cliched
terms and things like this. If you just get
into that habit and you write two million
words that way, it's that much harder to break
you out.
For me, that was a drawback, and also revision.
I kept thinking, I'd get feedback on a book
from my readers, I'd send it around and I'd
be like, "Wow, there's so much wrong with
this book. How about I just write a better
one next time that doesn't have all these
problems?" Well, that was not the right way
of looking at it, at least after I entered
my journeyman stage as a writer.
After I got my first couple of bad books--
I say bad books. They're actually not terrible,
and the books that you're writing aren't terrible.
But there are certain things you generally
can't learn about constructing a plot and
how to make payoffs happen until you just
get some fluency with writing endings. For
most of us that means writing a number of
stories till you start to get a feel for how
the beats of a story work in the type of story
you're writing. And then learning to take
those books and make them better is just really,
really handy.
If we have time today, I'll launch into a
little mini lecture on revision, to talk about
how I do it, and how I know some other do
it different strategies for that, like I did
prose last time with Q&A, or descriptions.
All right. "How do you create a magic that
doesn't seem like magic?"
This is actually a really interesting question,
because I do think that in a lot of books
you have a magic system, even when you don't
have a magic system. Like, when I use the
term magic, I'm also referring to most technology
and most science fiction books, and I'm just
also kind of talking about the fundamental
rules of how things work.
You might say that a lot of spy thrillers
don't have a magic system. But to me, I kind
of regard them as happening in "spy world"
where there are certain foundational understandings,
where it's like, the way that gadgets work,
the way that everyone always betrays you.
I've talked about this idea. Like, there's
an aesthetic. That's part of, I think, the
magic system for me.
How do you make a magic system that doesn't
feel like a magic system? One way is you make
it technology. Science fiction, with a few
exceptions of people who really knew their
stuff, like Arthur C. Clarke, is generally
not actually going to be real science. It's
going to be fantastical science.
So let's talk a little bit along these lines.
I promised you guys, I think, I'd talk about
this, internal versus external consistency.
And external. I don't know if I spelled those
right. I probably spelled them differently
both times. Yeah, did I? See? See? Yeah. That's
one of those ones that I have set in my computer
to autocorrect when I do it wrong. That's
sort of the same thing. I've never had to
learn how to spell it right, because my computer
just fixes it for me. Like, villain? That
I and that A should not be in the order they
actually are.
Regardless, let's talk about internal versus
external consistency. Or logic. I should just
say logic, because I can spell that.
Internal logic, internal consistency, is usually
really important for most stories. Not for
all stories. In fact, some humor stories make
a big deal out of their internal logic just
being haywire, and that's a feature rather
than a bug. But for most of the time, when
we talk about internal consistency, this is
where the internal logic of your story fits
and is consistent with itself. If this character
puts on a magic ring and turns invisible,
then you can extrapolate that this character
will later on put on the ring and turn invisible
again. This is being consistent with your
own rules and the rules that you give.
This is generally really important for even
soft magics. Really important for hard magic,
but even important for soft magic that you
can rely on a few things. It's consistent.
Even if your soft magic is we're not sure
what Gandalf can do, well then, you generally
stay consistent of, we don't know what Gandalf
can do.
Now you can move along that line. You can
start moving from soft to hard magic. In fact,
almost every fantasy story slowly moves along
this line as you learn more and more what
it can do. But you're just trying not to break
your own rules.
Now people mistake this with external logic,
or external consistency, where when you try
to explain why the things are happening in
a way that makes sense to a person who understands
physics and the laws of our universe.
An example of external logic, logic is much
better, external logic is when they say X-Men
happened because they have the X gene. That
is an attempt at external logic. They're saying,
you know how mutation works. If you watch
some of the X-Men movies they're like, "Sometimes
mutations happen, and evolution happens rapidly."
And they're trying to give it some external
logic to the story.
Don't mistake those. Oftentimes I will mention
in lectures that superhero magic systems tend
to be very hard magic systems, particularly
used modernly. People mistake that saying,
"Hard magic system? Superhero magic doesn't
make any sense." Well, yes, but Wolverine
has a healing factor. He always has a healing
factor. This is what he does. It's consistent.
It's hard magic. You understand what he can
do. That doesn't mean it has to make sense.
Internal logic, it doesn't matter that Superman
gets power from the sun somehow. But that's
an attempt at external logic.
Try to make sure you understand, like, why
is this important. Well, some genres really
depend on your external logic working. This
is hard science fiction, for an example. you
don't have to be 100% realistic, but you have
to give people an ability to make the leap
of logic. And in fact, a little bit of external
logic, applied even to a fantasy book, can
help people suspend their disbelief quite
a bit.
This is why, in writing hard magic systems
like I do, I usually add in a little bit of
external logic. I usually say, all right,
this is the characters discussing the laws
of thermodynamics if you know physics, and
then pointing out the hole, and this is how
it works. Like, I give a little bit of that
so the reader can suspend disbelief.
So how can you make a magic that doesn't feel
like a magic? A lot of that's going to depend
on do you add a lot of external logic. Do
you convince them that it's not a magic, that
it's just the way things work? Or you can
sometimes have a magic system that's built
into just the way, the logic of the universe.
We don't necessarily question that in spy
thrillers people can wear masks that make
them look like other people. Well, sometimes
we do. But you know what I mean. You wouldn't
call that a magic system really. But that
totally is of the spy genre. If you have a
spy thriller where no one had had a mask up
until the midpoint and then they pull it off,
a lot of times in movies, the audience is
like, oh, yeah, that's part of spy thrillers.
I'm okay with them adding that, even though
they didn't set it up ahead of time in the
way that Sanderson's First Law says they should,
because the whole genre has some laws with
it.
If a person who is a vampire drinks someone's
blood and gets their energy back at the end
of a book where they've never done that before,
most readers are going to be like, oh, yeah,
that's what vampires do. That's another way
to kind of have a magic system that you are
playing off of, but that doesn't feel like
magic, is if it's playing into the genre conventions
in such a way that the general reader with
fluency in that genre is going to expect it
and not get tripped up by it.
"How do we give enough exposition to make
the reader understand the world, but maintain
mystery and twists?" That's a great question.
Let me ask you, audience. How do you, in your
own writing, or have you seen it in other
people's writing or stories, have you read
books with a lot of science fiction and fantasy
mystery to them, where the explanations don't
remove that? How did that work for you? Yeah,
go ahead.
STUDENT: I feel like this was achieved really
well in the first Mistborn book.
BRANDON: OK. Well, thank you very much. Your
check's in the mail.
STUDENT: Not spoiling it for people, but at
the beginning of the book there's expectations
and there's an explanation of certain aspects
of the world and society that are lived in,
so that the reader buys into it. Like, OK,
this is how it works. So a great twist is
for them, the characters and the reader, to
then find out, "Oh, no. We were lied to."
BRANDON: The "Oh, no. We were lied to," to
the readers is dangerous but very effective.
A couple ways to do this is to-- the easiest
way is to hang a lantern on it. This is a
stage term. I don't know where it came from.
It's where you have a character specifically
say, "These two things don't look like they
go together. Oh, well, they obviously do."
That's you saying to the reader, "Hint, hint.
Something's wrong here."
But a lot of times you can do it more subtly
by showing two aspects of the magic or world
that don't jive together, to the point that
they start to form a kind of clash, a dissonance
where these things aren't in harmony. Then
the reader starts to subconsciously look for
an explanation to stretch for why special
relativity and general relativity don't mesh
yet, or something like that. Like, where's
our unifying theory? And then when one pops
up, the reader's like, "Oh!." That's a way
you can build some mystery into it.
But you can also, generally a good way to
leave some mystery, is to say, "Here is your
one little segment of the world you're going
to understand, Harry, but there's so many
other things that people are doing. You're
just at school. You're a first year. You're
going to learn these three spells. But don't
worry about all these other things that people
are doing." And that kind of, like I said,
J. K. Rowling does a pretty decent job of
balancing, in the Harry Potter books, this
sense of wonder and a sense of internal logic.
She does not maintain internal logic between
books, which drives a lot of people crazy.
That's where J. K. Rowling had-- When someone
says to you, "Why didn't they use a time turner
for this? Why don't they use a polyjuice potion
for this?" Her internal logic per book tends
to be really solid. You get this sense that
you're getting just enough explained that
the characters can solve problems with the
magic, but you don't feel like all the mystery
is gone. It just breaks apart a little bit
between books. But I give those books that
benefit of the doubt. I just say to myself,
well, the kids just don't understand why they
can't use a polyjuice potion here, or why
time turners. They just didn't explain that
to them because they're dumb kids, and things
like that.
I allow myself that because J. K. Rowling
does such a great job with internal logic
of a given book, that in some ways it's too
much to expect those books to also have the
internal logic of Lord of the Rings, which
has really excellent internal logic. You just
have to read a lot of The Silmarillion. It
also has great internal logic in the actual
published books. Lord of the Rings is a gold
standard for how to use magic systems, like
I talked about before.
But those are just a few ways. Anyone else
have any ways that they have maintained mystery
or seen it done? Yeah, go ahead.
STUDENT: I was just going to say, and this
kind of tags along with what you were saying,
kind of just a variation of it, but focus
on what the characters know. Focus on seeing
things from their perspective, and that allows
the world to seem so much bigger, because
it's around you.
BRANDON: Yeah. This is the advantage of a
third person limited. In case those online
didn't hear, he said focus on what the character
knows and seeing the world through their eyes,
and you can maintain a sense of grand scale
and mystery, while still having them have
a little bit of control over their immediate
situation. A third limited is just wonderful
for this.
Yeah?
STUDENT: In the first Borne movie, Borne identity,
it starts off with him on the island with
the doctor, and the doctor studies him and
makes basically a list of Borne. Look at all
these things you can do, including having
him just mentally [___]. So you know that
he has these capabilities, but you don't know
where or how he got them.
BRANDON: That's an excellent example. I'll
repeat that. In the first Borne movie there's
a doctor who studies him and says, "Here's
all these cool abilities you have, but we
don't know where you got these different abilities."
This actually answers the question before.
There's a great story that has a magic system
that's not a magic system. Because the magic
system is going to be Borne discovering his
memories and why they get them back. If you
do it in a very logical way that someone says,
"Hey, if you do this you'll start getting
your memories back," that's a magic system.
Fulfill this thing, do this thing, get this
reward. And then the character starts to get
his memories back and learn why he was able
to do these things. At the end it ties very
strongly into why he lost his memories, what
happened, and who he was before, all kind
of converges on a single kind of character
arc and plot arc. It's a great example of
a magic-less magic system.
All right let's go to next question here.
"Do you change or modify rules based on the
age of the intended reader?" I'll add to this
one I know that's later in the list, which
is "Do you, while you're writing, ever change
your rules?" Let's talk about modifying rules.
I think the person is asking, do I modify
Sanderson's Laws, or do I modify how I use
magic systems when I'm writing for different
age groups. Generally, I do not. There's this
really fine balance between writing down to
an audience and writing specifically toward
an audience. It is a tricky thing to navigate.
Generally-- let's just put this on the board
so you guys know where I'm coming from. Generally,
in the publishing industry, children's books
are 18 and under. So when we say children's
fiction, it includes YA. That is a difficult
thing for a lot of people to just get used
to that terminology, because YA, not children.
But that is how the industry talks about children's
books. When a publisher has a division between
adult and children, children's is everything
18 and below.
Now we have YA in here, which is covering
about age 13 and up -ish. A rule of thumb:
Age of your protagonist plus 2 is about the
age group you're intending the book for. That's
why you see a ton of 15- and 16-year-olds.
People will generally read about someone older
than them, and they don't like reading about
someone younger than them. Rule of thumb.
These are very loose rules. The Golden Compass
is a great example of something just kind
of breaking all of these rules and just ignoring
them. They get shelved in three shelves in
the bookstore because no one knows where to
put it.
But around 13, so this dividing line right
here, there's a very big divide. Down here
we call it middle grade. There's a big dividing
line right here that's different based on
the age of the reader, where the teen stops
reading books that gatekeepers give them and
start picking up books that they have chosen.
That's usually seen as the fuzzy line between
middle grade and YA.
That's why you just kind of think about--
the other kind of fuzzy line there is romance.
Like, middle grade, it's like romance needs
to be kind of puppy love-ish, and maybe a
little hint here and there. They are curious
about it, but they don't really actually want
a romance in their stories most of the time.
Or if they do, it's a very kind of Disney
romance. There's no actually romancing going
on. It's just the state of the world has become
secure that these two have now formed a couple.
We know that that's supposed to happen.
Those are kind of your two big things, and
that divides middle grade and YA. And then
underneath it are, and there's some transitional
books in here, but then we kind of go to the
chapter book sort of thing. Then underneath
that, I am not an expert on, so I'll refer
you to a different teacher to talk about the
nuances between board books and picture books,
and the easy-to-read books and things like
that.
Yeah?
STUDENT: What about new adult?
BRANDON: New adult has not become a thing.
I'm glad you brought it up. There was an attempt
at creating a new thing here that was like
18 to 22 called new adult. This was just the
children's publishers looking to have another
audience. It has just not become a thing.
You might be able to find people online who
disagree. But my experience has been, the
last five or six years, publishers just stopped
asking for new adult and stopped trying to
make it a thing.
Already, the line between YA and adult was
really getting vague, at the upper end YA.
AS an example, Steelheart is shelved in YA
in the US and in adult sci-fi/fantasy in the
UK. That's the just publishers deciding, "Ah,
this is where we think it goes." You see that
in a ton of upper YA. It's like, where is
this line? Trying to put another line is there
is generally, in my experience, not worked,
but your mileage may vary. There may be publishers
who think it worked fantastically well. My
publisher, when I asked them about new adult,
they're like, nah, just didn't become a thing.
So good question.
Where I kind of reside is I haven't really
written underneath middle grade. Middle grade,
if you're wondering, Harry Potter is a good
example. It starts in middle grade and then
ends in YA. Hunger Games is YA. Fablehaven
is middle grade. Just kind of some touchstones
there for you.
You do have kind of an important division
right here. YA is not edited for content.
Some editorial lines do edit for content.
Like, if you're publishing with Disney, they
are going to edit for content. But most editorial
lines do not edit YA for content. That means
they do not edit out swearing, sexuality,
or violence. A lot of people have an impression
that YA is edited for content. They mean middle
grade. Middle grade is edited for content
by most publishers, which means that they
will try to get the middle grade to have less
of an R rating, if you've written an R-rated
middle grade for some reason.
Yeah?
STUDENT: Do you ever have publishers or editors
try to have you put more graphic content in?
BRANDON: Okay, question. I get asked this
a lot. Have I ever had editors or publishers
try to get me to put in more graphic violence
or sex? No. This does not happen. It happens
in romance, specifically, if you're writing
erotica. They may come in and say, "We need
another sex scene right here." That has definitely
happened. You will occasionally get, if you're
writing an action thriller, be like, "We need
an action scene."
But this is a perception that people generally
have outside the publishing industry about
the publishing industry, and that's just not
the way the publishing industry works. They
purchase a book from you because they like
that style of book. The editor's job is going
to be to make it a better version of that
book. I've never had an editor even mention
saying, "Oh, could we have more sex scenes?"
or things like that.
I did have Moshe once ask me, he's my editor
at TOR, he's like, "Are Vin and Elend sleeping
together?" I said, "Yes, but I have a large
audience that doesn't want to imagine that
they are, so I just leave it off, leave it
out." He's like, "Oh, OK." Like, that's the
closest that we've ever gotten.
Good question.
Middle grade will, my experience with middle
grade, they will edit for content and they
will occasionally edit for word choice. Doesn't
happen a lot, but sometimes they'll be like,
"This just doesn't feel like a middle grade
word." You can use challenging words here
and there, but if a passage just feels too
much like they have to get out the dictionary
to read it, I've had editors say, "Can we
use a more clear word here?"
For middle grade, generally, my editors have
been like, "Let's streamline this. Let's focus
on one character. Let's keep the complexity
down. And let's make sure that your magic
system is simple and straightforward." That
doesn't mean the situations can't get complex,
or the emotions complex, and that's the difference
I think. If you write down to your audience,
you are writing out the emotional complexity,
and kind of the complexity that comes from
the difficulties of dealing with all of this
stuff. That we don't want to do.
In middle grade, some editors will tell you,
try to streamline and try to keep the world
building less complex and the learning curve
much shallower. YA very rarely had that. Though
the number one editorial request I get from
my YA editors is to ask me to give the reader
more emotional touchstones to what the characters
are feeling. Where in adult I often have them
go the other direction and say, "You're going
overboard on the emotion. Just let the reader
pick it up." That's been the difference between
my adult editors and my YA editors.
STUDENT: This is a kind of follow-up question.
My central character is 8.
BRANDON: Your central character is 8, yep.
STUDENT: What are the dangers of that? Why
don't we see more adult books written with--?
BRANDON: Yeah. Why don't we see more adult
books written with child protagonists? Number
one, they're hard to write, and number two,
the marketing people just don't know how to
market them. But, I mean, Ender is 8 through
a big portion of Ender's Game. How old is
he when he's in battle school? He's still
not that old, right?
STUDENT: No, he's 11.
BRANDON: Yeah, he's like 11. Ender's Game
is a perfect example of a book that really
is thematically YA, and you would call middle
grade by age of the protagonist. But it's
usually given to young adults. Young young
adults, right? But it's usually read by people
that Ender is younger than them.
This does happen. Most of the time you're
safest just saying it's an adult book, and
if they decide to publish it somewhere else,
great. The Golden Compass is another great
example. His Dark Materials, where Lira, it's
like, how old is she in these? Is this a YA?
Is it not? Nobody really knows.
This kind of speaks to, another tangent. This
Q&A, we just go on tangents. Remember that
genre and all the things we talk about with
genre, are marketing tools. This is why we
have science fiction and fantasy sections
in a bookstore. It is a marketing tool. That
marketing tool can be very handy to people
whose books naturally fit into one of these
categories. If your books don't naturally
fit, it can be harder for you. That isn't
a reason to not write them, but it is a reason
to try to do a little bit of the marketing
people's jobs for them by saying, "This is
an adult book with a child protagonist like
X, Y, or Z." They'll be like, "Oh, we know
how to market X, Y, or Z. OK."
This is why, a lot of times, if you have--
it's really hard in romance because you have
to ask the question, does your Charlaine Harris
True Blood mystery with vampires go in fantasy,
or in romance, or in mystery, or in horror?
In the few places that still have horror sections
of bookstores. Usually they will just use
cover marketing and blurbs to solidify it
into one of those genres and place it there
in the bookstore, even if it's a pretty bad
fit sometimes, because it has to go somewhere.
This is why you'll find Neal Stephenson in
literary fiction instead of science fiction
a lot of times. They're like, "We think the
best thing to do is market this toward that
crowd that likes Margaret Atwood, who will
like some science fiction-y things, but are
really looking for interesting prose as well.
So if we stick Neal Stephenson there, maybe
they'll get it." But half the other time you'll
find Neal Stephenson in science fiction, because
people are rightly saying, "Hey, the father
of modern cyberpunk probably belongs in science
fiction."
Yeah?
STUDENT: This is back to the internal/external
logic.
BRANDON: Yeah.
STUDENT: What do you do if there's a case
where they may conflict? How do you choose
which one is better?
BRANDON: Internal logic is almost always your
best choice, if they conflict. If they're
conflicting, most of the time it's because
you are breaking some weird rule of external
logic, some weird sort of--
Let me give you an example here. This is going
to be a weird example, but it will relate.
I once read, I was reading a book, I think
it was John Keegan's History of Warfare, where
it talked about the theory that horses early
in the classical era had not been bred to
be strong enough to carry a rider on their
back, which was part of why chariots became
such a big thing. I'm paraphrasing a very
complicated anthropological discussion. But
this idea was, I loved the idea of, wait!
Horses pulling something rather than having
something sit on their back, you could have
smaller horses and things like that.
So I wrote a book where you couldn't write
the horses because it would break a horse's
back. Every reader's like, "These stupid people.
How can they not have tried riding a horse?
You can obviously ride a horse. Why are entire
cultures saying this stupid thing?" It took
a lot of work to convince them that realistically
people couldn't ride these horses because
it would actually harm the horses. Readers
had in their head that horses are something
you ride. Therefore, this rule breaks my external
logic of this thing, even though it was actually
externally logical in the first place.
That was something that taught me, if you're
going to go against people's expectations,
you need to put extra work into it. You generally
want to do this, because once you've done
it, it gives you control over your story.
I think that the internal logic is more important
than the external logic, but you do have to
realize that sometimes you're going to have
to be upfront with a little more of your world
building, which raises your learning curve.
Basically your best choice is to find shows
where you can show this working in the world,
that will really imprint in people's brains.
Like for instance, showing someone ride on
a horse's back and it is hurting the horse.
And then people remember, "Oh, that's what
happens," rather than just having people say
it a lot.
You run into this if you are using real world
mythology. Because even though it doesn't
have, real world mythology you have to pretend
it has an external logic. People know what
a vampire is. When we were talking earlier
about magic systems without magic systems,
stuff like that. People are like, okay, vampires
suck blood. They are turned aside by garlic
and crosses, yada, yada, yada. If you aren't
having your vampires act like that, then the
longer you go in your book without explaining
how your vampires work, the harder it is going
to be to disabuse people of their expectations
for vampires, and indeed they're still going
to forget, even after you've taught them,
unless you're very careful about it. This
is important to do because it's probably going
to be plot relevant to you.
But you have to realize there's just more
work to do in doing so, which is often why
you see the fantasy books that'll use things
that are elves but aren't elves. They just
have a different name. So it's like, these
aren't Tolkien elves. They're 95% Tolkien
elves, but there's one thing that's very different,
so we're just going to call them something
else and try to reinforce to you what that
difference is.
Yeah, let's go to the next question on the
list. All right. Spoiler questions about one
of my books.
"Is there a way to see hard magic disguised
as soft magic in a book?"
Yeah, it's very, very common. Do realize that
the readers interfacing with a story element
is going to be the most important thing. If
you've got a-- for instance, Anne McCaffrey.
Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern, she
insisted her entire life was science fiction
and not fantasy. All right, you know. She
added a bunch of external logic to explain
how the dragons worked and things like that.
She worked very hard to explain this as science
fiction. Everyone who read those books thought
of them as fantasy.
Because the way the reader interfaces with
the story is actually more important than
what the author says about said story. I'm
totally okay with Anne being like, "No! These
are science fiction." You can say whatever
you want. You can tell people all you want
about your stories. But what they experience
is way more important than any of that.
If you are having a hard magic disguised as
a soft magic, you've got to treat your book
like a soft magic book, not like a hard-magic
book. Though you can obviously make that transition
over time, which is a very fun transition,
as people find out the things that were illogical,
that seemed soft, get explanations and become
hard magic.
Fred Saberhagen's Books of the Swords, which
are very fun stories, it's been a long time
since I've read them, but what I believe happens
in these books is a bunch of people from earth
that are very advanced with science fiction
technology go to a planet where there are
humans and decide to be their gods. You only
find out about these gods through secondhand
accounts and things like this, as you slowly,
through the series, realize, "There's a reason
why this mythology just sounds like our earth
mythology, is the people who are these gods
are just science fiction people who decide
to go play god on a planet." Again, it's been
a long time, so I could be misquoting Fred's
entire lore there.
But I've seen that sort of thing before, where
it's like it's not magic, it's science, but
the people doing the science, it's-- Who's
law is that? It's Clarke's Law? Any sufficiently
advanced science will seem like a magic to
people who don't know about it.
So yes, you can definitely disguise a hard-magic
system as a soft magic system. Just realize
in most cases you need to treat that like
a soft magic system because that's how the
reader is going to experience it.
"How do you prevent world building from feeling
like a chore?" Ooo, discovery writer here.
Most of the time when people ask this, they
are discovery writers. And I would recommend
to you, write your book and don't stress it.
Finish your book, and then decide what world
building things you actually need to expand
upon to tell the story that you have already
told a little bit better. Do all of your world
building, for your first book at least, afterward.
If you're feeling like world building's a
chore, don't do it yet. Do what makes you
excited to write your story.
Then after you're story you'll get done and
you'll be like, all right, I really need to
understand these religions a little better.
But most discovery writers will have filled
in a lot of that as they're going, because
they get excited by seeing through the character's
eyes and stuff. You can do a lot in post,
so to speak, where you add all this stuff
in. You only get into trouble when you are
then doing more books in the series and you're
going to have to stick to what you put in
the first book.
So if you are a discovery writer, and that
idea is very daunting to you, make sure you
build in a bunch of mysteries that the characters
don't understand yet, that you don't understand
yet, that you can have fun exploring and extrapolating
upon in the next book, so you have that same
sense of eagerness, and then just make sure
after you finish the book, you get some early
readers, find out what they're confused by,
do your world building to fix that.
Understand that, in general, any process that
you use to arrive at a published book, readers
generally, if you're doing your job right,
won't be able to tell what your process was.
In fact, I had a really interesting conversation
with Cory Doctorow once where he said, "It's
really interesting that readers generally
can't tell which chapters took me six months
of sweat, blood, and tears, and which chapters
I wrote in an afternoon and they were great
on the first try." That's because the process
of publishing and revision is built around
this idea that by the end you're hopefully
having a consistent quality, and the things
that are really hard, or that come out really
rough in your first drafts get smoothed over
until the point that it is a finished piece
of art.
If you're a discovery writer, or if you're
some weird hybrid between, which really most
of us are, don't stress about this. Do what
makes you excited to write the book. Finish
the book and then ask yourself, all right,
what does this really need in revision to
make it better?
STUDENT: How do you do this if you're a hard
outliner. Say that you have a plot and character,
but you're like, well setting and details,
and do I really want to explain how this works,
kind of thing?
BRANDON: The thing about it is, you can hybridize
these things really easily. Try to pretend
that it's not, like, one camp or the other.
I bet there are a ton of people out there
who come up with a pretty solid plot and characters
and don't world build at all until they're
done with the book. At that point you kind
of have to make a few decisions based on what
do you want the feel of your book to be? How
much world building and lore do you want there
to be? How much of this is a selling point
for your book?
There are lots of great books that don't spend
very much time on the lore world building
aspect. A lot of these are kind of your David
Gemmell-type gritty, or the kind of modern
wave of the Joe Abercrombie-style books, where
it's like, who cares about the thousand years
of history and lore, or this thing. I'm telling
a story about this one person going and doing
this one interesting thing. In that case,
you can just say, this isn't a selling point
of my books. My selling point is something
else. I'm just not going to do it. I'm not
going to worry about it. That's okay. In fact,
that's advised. Do what is exciting to you.
Now, give your book to readers. See what readers
are wanting more of, and you don't always
want to give it to them, but you can acknowledge,
OK, they're confused here. We need a little
bit more here or things like that and use
the tools to write the story you want to write.
But just like in visual arts, not every piece
of artwork needs to be an incredibly realistic,
detailed oil painting. There are people who
do with three brush strokes things that feel
amazing, with very little amounts of detail
put into that painting. It's hard to say,
you can say which one you like more, but I
don't know if one is more art than another,
if that makes sense.
Create the type of art you want to create,
and if world building is like pulling teeth
for you, then write books where you don't
need it, and only put in as much as you feel
like you need. For the rest of you who are
like me, just don't let it overcome the story,
and don't let yourself spend too much time
world building. Otherwise you'll never write
your stories.
What's my opinion on fan fiction?
A little off topic, but I think fan fiction
is cool. I'm glad people write fan fiction.
I didn't come up through that community. I
never really read a lot of fan fiction. I
don't read the fan fiction based on my books.
But I think it's an important and valid part
of the writing community. Once in a while
you can shave the serial numbers off your
fan fiction and sell 40 million copies, or
whatever.
If you don't know, 50 Shades of Gray was a
fan fiction. You didn't know that? Oh, it
was a Twilight fan fic. Yeah. It was. Very,
very explicitly. It was posted online. And
then she changed it around to not be a Twilight
fan fic and sold a lot of books. Lot of books.
All right. "How do you know if your magic
system works?"
How do you know if your magic system works?
All right. We have to define "works." Because
like every other part of writing, a magic
system is a tool to help you achieve your
goals, and you have to decide what your goals
are. That is different for every writer. What
do you want it to do?
This kind of comes into some Brandon Sanderson
philosophy on art. I feel like sometimes,
just in writing and all sorts of-- writing
in specific, we have this sort of pretentious
feel that is very different from other types
of art. I'll often align this to visual mediums,
or even food. If you don't like fish, then
that's OK. Nothing wrong. Now once in a while,
even in food, people will die on certain hills
about how you cook a steak. It does happen.
But a lot of times someone says, "You know
what? I prefer this flavor of ice cream to
this flavor of ice cream." And everyone's
like, "Oh, that's too bad you don't like the
thing I like, but I can understand everyone
has different tastes."
In fiction we put a lot more behind it. Some
of this is valid, and some of it I'm like,
I don't know if one art is necessarily better
than another art. But it comes- you have to
judge which is better art and which isn't.
That's kind of what we do all the time. It's
part of being a human being.
It's not like we shouldn't do it, but as the
same time, as you as an artist, when you are
creating a piece of art and a piece of writing,
your focus should be on what do I want this
piece of art to achieve? What is my goal with
it? I'm going to measure your success in creating
that art based on how well you were able to
do the thing you were trying to do. Once you
do that, then there's other levels of certain
types of art, whatever, and things like that.
But at its core, the first thing you should
be looking to do is, what do I want my art
to do? In that case, use the magic system
to achieve what you want it to do.
How do you know? You find your audience, somehow,
who are people that you are writing this book
for. May just be your family. It might be
you wanting to go full time and are looking
for a large segment of the fantasy-reading
public, or the science fiction-reading public,
or whatever. You give the book to them and
judge their reactions. This is why it's better
for readers to say their emotional response
to things, rather than trying to fix it.
Because sometimes you will have a book that
you planned a character to be the funniest
character ever put to the page. Then the character
turns out to be Jar Jar Binks, and your audience
hates this character. You have done something
wrong in that case. But sometimes you are
writing a character that you just want to
make a certain segment of the population very
uncomfortable, and another segment of the
population to laugh a lot, Mr. Bean. Some
people detest Mr. Bean, and some people laugh
uproariously at Mr. Bean.
That is not wrong because half the audience
hates it. I wouldn't say half. But a segment
of the population hates it. It is targeting
the right audience, and you find out what
that audience is and see if you're-- there's
a very big difference between Mr. Bean and
Jar Jar Binks, where one was intended to do
something and didn't do it, and the other
one did exactly what it's intended to do.
Is the magic system working? What is it intended
to do in your story, for the audience you
are trying to reach? Do some experiments with
this, and then use the magic system as a tool
to help you achieve the type of art that you
want to achieve. Easier said than done, I
do acknowledge that.
Let's see. Let's see. "I'd love to screen
write for animation. Any tips?"
No. Well, one. Go to a screenwriting class.
I am, unfortunately, not an expert in screenwriting.
I have written one and a half screenplays.
Maybe someday I will become more of an expert
at screenwriting, but I am very much not an
expert in a screenwriting career. Now that's
the thing. I am only barely an expert in how
to break into sci-fi/fantasy publishing. Why?
Because I broke in 15 years ago. Anyone who
broke in 15 years ago is going to have a very
different experience from people breaking
in today. And in fact, the further I get from
when I broke in, the more difficult it is
for me to be an expert on how you break in
right now. That's something you should always
keep in mind when you're getting advice, specifically
on breaking in, because the market and the
way people break in changes a lot.
When I was trying to break in, there were
a lot of people who were like, "You need to
write short stories." These were the old guard,
who all broke in in the '60s and '70s by writing
short fiction for the magazines. I was trying
to break in in the '90s and the 2000s, and
guess what? The magazine market had dried
up. There were much fewer magazines in circulation.
They paid a lot less.
And beyond that, the people who were really
good at short stories were really good at
short stories. As we proved last week, this
is not something I'm really good at. I could
become good at it, but I read novels. I wrote
novels. I enjoyed novels. And so the advice
of break in with short stories was terrible
advice for me. In fact, I think it was terrible
advice for the majority of people trying to
break in in my era, because they didn't subscribe
to the magazines, they weren't reading the
short stories, so they didn't know how to
write them.
In the same way, I can't give you advice on
breaking into screen writing or animation.
You've got to go to somebody who's done it
recently.
I can tell you, this person asked, "Is editing
fantasy/sci-fi a good backup plan?"
OK, let's talk about becoming an editor. OK?
The answer is no*. All right? The reason that
planning on becoming an editor as a backup
for becoming a published author is that there
are fewer editing jobs than there are jobs
for professional writers. Now, the editing
jobs are a little easier to get than breaking
out big as a sci-fi/fantasy writer. But there
are way fewer of them. So if you have a dual
interest and you like them both, it's totally
valid to pursue both at the same time, just
like if you read a lot of short stories and
novels it'd be perfectly valid for you to
try to break in on either direction.
But if you're like, "Hmm, I'll just become
an editor as a failsafe," it is really hard
to become an editor of sci-fi/fantasy. There
are, in Utah there's like two jobs for sci-fi/fantasy
editors, and I don't think Lisa Mangum is
going to quit any time soon, and I don't think
Chris Schoebinger is going to quit any time
soon. So guess what? There are no jobs. I
could be exaggerating. They might have an
intern or assistant at Shadow Mountain who
cycles through.
But if you want to be a trade science fiction/fantasy
editor, you are going to need to move to New
York. That is where 95% of the jobs are. The
little percents that are not in New York are
in Seattle at Wizards of the Coast, or in
Boston at Houghton Mifflin, and that's about
it. Unless you're talking about Europe and
going to London, which, yeah.
So you're going to have to live in New York.
OK? You're just going to have to be dedicated
to moving to New York, which is extremely
expensive. You're going to be competing against
people for jobs who have master's degrees
in editor from Columbia, who live in New York
and are applying to all the internships, because
they have editing programs at NYU and at Columbia,
right in New York, and those are who you're
competing against.
It not impossible. One person from my era
at BYU, Stacy Whitman, managed to break into
children's trade as an editor. She went and
got a master's degree at a prestigious university
in Boston, made a lot of contacts in New York
and Boston, managed to get a job at Wizards
of the Coast, and then moved to starting her
own imprint at a children's publisher in New
York. It is totally possible. She's the only
one who did that from my age group, and I've
got-- there's, like, seven of us who went
full time as writers. I guess you can count
Peter, my editorial assistant. He took the
Manga route and went and got a job at Tokyopop,
and then I hired him away here.
But it is just really hard, OK, really hard.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it if you're
really excited by it. But don't use it as
your failsafe, the "of course, I can just
become an editor." It's really tough. If you
want to do it, you're going to need to start
talking to editors about how to do it, how
to get into the programs, how to get the internships.
And good luck to you, because people do do
it. Ann Swords from BYU, who was the generation
before me, is a senior editor at Ace. So there's
at least one person from BYU who went on to
become a professional science fiction/fantasy
editor at a major big five house in New York.
She's the only one, I think, who did that.
So it's possible.
Someone from this class, Ben Grange, became
an agent. Becoming an agent, little bit easier.
There's a few more jobs, I would say, as agents.
But also it's very demanding, because you
make money based on your authors, and if you
have a bad eye for picking authors, you just
won't make any money. But we'll talk about
agents later.
Did that make sense to you guys? Any other
questions on that? BYU does have a decent
editing program. You can go into that and
see if you like it. And do know there are
lots more jobs if you are willing to not edit
sci-fi/fantasy. If you're willing to edit
trade manuals for hearing aid companies, there's
a lot of jobs.
"How can you make limits or weaknesses appear
natural and not contrived?"
Ooo, boy, contrived. Here's the thing. Everything
in a book is contrived. Everything in our
lives in real life is coincidental. Coincidence
is basically how everything works. Every story
is a set of coincidences. This, on one hand,
is not a problem, because having a character
win $10 million in the lottery is no less
or more likely than any person just winning
$10 million in the lottery in real life. It
does happen.
However, there's this sense that if you make
things too easy or convenient for the reader,
then the reader sees the author's hand. You
want to give an illusion that it's not coincidental,
even though it absolutely is coincidental
and contrived in every situation. So this
is a good question, asking yourself how do
you make the weaknesses and limitations not
seem contrived.
Usually, we do these with some measure of
internal or external logic. Superman's powers
are taken away by a magic rock. Saying that
alone is like, eh, that seems really contrived.
Oh, it's a magic rock from his home world.
And when he lived on it he didn't have powers,
so when you're near it he doesn't have powers.
Oh, that seems less contrived. It's exactly
as much contrived, but it gives a sense that
it's not. That is usually one of the worst
examples of magic rock takes away super being's
powers for reasons.
You can come up with better reasons. For instance,
limitation on the One Ring, Sauron can see
you. Why? Sauron built the rings to be able
to do this. Every reader accepts that, because
it's inside. It's internal logic. You've given
it a reason and inched toward external logic
by saying why would somebody do this? Why
would somebody create this? Oh, a reasonable
person might, themselves, do this. Therefore
the limitation, the flaw, makes sense. If
you're doing this with a magic system, just
try to juggle your consistency, your logic,
in such a way that it makes a certain amount
of sense in the book.
In fact, someone asked me, "How do you tie
disparate magic systems together into a given
novel?" It's another question later on. And
I say, use these things also. I developed
allomancy and feruchemy as separate magic
systems for two different books. Feruchemy
came because I remember being in high school
and being an insomniac, and this was not a
good match for high school. I was tired all
day and then tried to go to sleep at night
and just lay in bed. I thought, "I wish I
could store up my sleepiness in some sort
of amulet, and then take it out when I want
to go to bed. And then when I don't want to
be asleep, I can just put my sleepiness in
this thing and be awake." Wouldn't that be
wonderful? That'd be pretty great.
That was the foundation for what became the
magic system called feruchemy in the Mistborn
books. When I added that into the books, I
said, "This is going to feel really weird
adding this magic system to this one where
people jump around on bits of metal and eat
it. How do I make it consistent? Oh, we're
just going to make it, metal be a theme. You
use metal to put-- you can't just have anything.
You've got a piece of metal. We'll make the
different metals do different things in one
magic and do analogous things in the other
magic." And so suddenly it feels like they're
cohesively one magic system, even though they
were developed completely separately and don't
really, on paper, feel like they should have
anything to do with one another.
This is actually really easy to do when you're
building your magic systems. Come up with
a theme, ask yourself about this theme, and
play with it for a little while. See what
ends up working with readers, and get them
to buy in. It's not as hard as it sounds,
but it does take a little practice.
All right. "What does Brandon think of The
Mandalorian?" Continuing our theme of Star
Wars stuff.
I liked The Mandalorian. I really enjoyed
it. It was just fun. I liked the beginning
episodes and the end episodes better. You
can probably tell that from the type of books
I write. I like a consistent story and a long-reaching
arc, rather than the mini episodes in the
middle. But the heist mini episode in the
middle was really great, so some of those
were good too.
So thumbs up, good job, John Favreau and friends.
They had, like, a ton of-- it felt like--
do you guys watch that, watch the different
directors when they pop up, and you'll be
like, "Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Hey!"
It's just like, "I know you've been in a Marvel
movie, and you were buddies over here." It
felt like a bunch of friends got together
and were like, "We're going to make a Star
Wars show," and they just did.
How do you say his name? The director of Thor:
Ragnarok?
STUDENT: Taika Waititi.
BRANDON: Taika Waititi? He was the voice of
the droid in the finale. He directed the finale
and he was the voice of the droid and stuff
like that. I'm like, "You guys are just having
a party. You're just spending Lucasfilm’s'
money to have a party." And I'm totally behind
this. It feels like Star Wars hasn't been
enough fun for a while, and that felt like
just a lot of fun.
All right let's see. "How do you decide that
you need to add some new magic, and how do
you add it smoothly without turning it into
a deus ex machina?"
That's an excellent question, very good question,
because Sanderson's First Law came out from
me messing this up. There's another question
later on that was like, "Are Sanderson's Laws
absolute?" I guess I didn't make this clear
enough. No. No, no, no. The whole theme of
this class is, nothing is absolute, and I
am going to be wrong some amount of the time.
Sanderson's Laws have worked very well for
me, in order to help me create the types of
magic systems I like to create in books, and
I think they have interesting applications
to storytelling in general that are worth
doing an entire class period on so that hopefully
this helps people. But I am sure there are
fantastic magic systems out there that just
completely ignore any sort of Sanderson's
Laws, as well they should, because that's
that creator's vision. Doesn't have to be
mine.
But how to, in my way, add a new magic system
element without making it feel out of nowhere?
Well, number one, you make sure, if you're
worried that you're going to be doing this,
that this will happen, that when you're writing
your story you indicate that there are holes
in the magic. This is really handy, particularly
if you're going to be writing in a series
and you don't know exactly what you're going
to be doing in your series, saying, "You know
what? We don't understand this aspect of it.
It's something else."
Example of this in Mistborn is when I have
Sazed use his magic, feruchemy, I have him
use it mostly offscreen, and I have him use
it in a moment that is kind of a violation
of Sanderson's First Law. if you haven't read
the book, Vin is unable to escape something
that is happening, and rather than suffer
the consequences, Sazed steps in and saves
her.
Now, this works on a couple of levels as a
reason. Back then I didn't even really know
Sanderson's First Law. But even still, I would
still have done this sequence the same way.
One reason is, it's in the middle of the book.
The purpose is not to give you a satisfying
resolution to Vin using her magic. Vin is
new at the magic, and it's mostly Kelsior's
fault that she's in this trouble in that scene
anyway. She does not deserve to pay the price
for Kelsior's foolhardiness in this situation.
And so I don't feel like it's pulling back,
pulling punches, by having someone else, who's
her other surrogate father figure in the series,
show up and save her when Kelsior's abilities
fail.
Beyond that, mostly this is here as an introduction
to Sazed having powers that we don't understand
that are going to be relevant later in this
book and very relevant in future books. So
having this moment to introduce that idea
was more important to me than making Vin get
out of this specific situation on her own,
because it was well beyond her ability to
get out of anyway. So in that situation, this
whole sequence, which is violating Sanderson's
First Law, but not really because I added
in the "satisfying." "It's not satisfying"
gives me a catch-all for violating my own
rules. But it does something else. What it
does is say, hey, there's mystery to this
other magic system that we're going to explore
later. That is a really great way to do this.
But another great way is to foreshadow things
going wrong. How many times have you-- like
they do this all the time in superhero comics,
where it's like characters starting to manifest
new power. We have them start to do it early
on. I mean, they just did it in the new Star
Wars movie. They knew they needed to have
a certain character perform a certain feat
with the Force later in the movie that had
not ever been used in the Force in the movies
before. So they put in a wounded snake.
What's that?
STUDENT: It did in The Mandalorian.
BRANDON: It did in The Mandalorian, but The
Mandalorian was made after this movie. It
also existed in the video games and stuff,
but it hadn't been in the movie cannon. So
they were like, "We're going to put it into
the movie cannon early in the movie, so later
on when we need this special Force power,
it has been used a couple of times." You put
this in early, then use it later. In fact,
you can always do that in post.
In fact, there's a piece of me that believes,
I haven't asked this, but there's a piece
of me that believed that they got the whole
movie done and they're like, "You know, this
whole Force power comes out of nowhere. We
should really add a scene where someone uses
it early on and discovers how to use it."
And they're like, "Yeah, giant snake." And
Baby Yoda. But you can't have television continuity.
That's a separate-- they are the same continuity,
but it's a separate viewer experience. Your
viewer experience should not have to depend
on a different viewer experience.
Regardless, it happens all the time in comic
books where the characters, like, they're
trying to shoot their web slinger, but it
does something weird, and they're like, "Why
is this not doing this like it's supposed
to? Something's going on." Then later on it
becomes a plot point, and then they figure
it out, and then they use it to solve the
problem. If you don't want to violate Sanderson's
First Law, really all its saying is do your
groundwork ahead of time, or in post.
I actually write sometimes; you guys will
love this. Any Bill and Ted fans in here?
If I ever run into something where I've added
in something that I know I should have foreshadowed,
but I don't want to go do it right now, I
put in brackets "remember a bucket." Because
there's a scene in Bill and Ted where they're
captured and they're like, "We've got to remember
to go back in time and put a bucket right
up there." Then the bucket falls, and they're
like, "Yeah!" I just tell myself to remember
the bucket, and then when I'm doing revisions
I'll go back, and I'll add in the bucket.
All right let's talk briefly, for 10 minutes,
about revision, just to kind of do something
a little different this week as well.
Revision. Boy, I hate revision. I just loathe
it. I know there are people in here who love
it. I have friends who love it, because they're
like, "Revision is so much easier than coming
up with the new stuff. Now I have something
to work with." Which I can understand.
Writing a book is a little bit more like making
a sculpture than non-writers might think,
where it's like, the person who's making a
sculpture is like, "First I get the general
sense of the shape of the face, and then I
work a little bit here." And each pass you
do over it makes it look a little bit more
like a face.
Well, books are the same way. A lot of times,
revision-- the job for me in my first drafts
is to get down the main plot arcs, the character's
emotional beats, and just to make sure that
the book has a satisfying set of promises
and payoffs. And so I am not looking for anything
related to the prose. But also my foreshadowing,
like remember a bucket, I'll just write something.
A lot of times, if I'm writing a book, it's
more important for me to keep momentum than
it is anything else. So if I change something,
I'll just change it for the next chapter.
Then if it works, I'll pretend it had always
been there. But revision is this process by
which we refine a book and make it better.
Now, I need to play devil's advocate for a
second and mention that there is a group of--
there's a writing philosophy and a group of
writers subscribe to this, who think you should
not revise. This philosophy goes something
like this. I'm hoping to not misquote it.
I want to give the argument the best that
they would, which is, you're better off practicing
your writing skills and trusting your instincts.
You're better off learning to do things in
first draft, rather than making excuses for
yourself to fix later. And most of the time,
these people say, when you revise you're not
actually making it better, you're just making
it different, and so you shouldn't revise
unless an editor says you have to do this
revision, or I won't buy it. This is a philosophy
based off of-- those are Heinlein's rules.
I don't know how strictly he kept to them.
But there is a large group, not a large group,
there is a small but vocal group of writers
who believe that you should never revise.
You can Google about this and find this.
I have not found this to be true in my writing.
Your mileage may vary. I have found that revision
is a vital part of taking something good and
making it great. This is partially because,
as I think I told you in a previous week,
I can't keep everything in my head at once.
I'm doing a Stormlight book right now. If
you haven't read the Stormlight books-- I
think I told you guys this. I don't know.
If you haven't read them, there's things called
Spren, which are attracted to people's emotions.
It's almost like these sprite things that'll
appear. If you're really angry, they'll appear
in the form of pools of blood at your feet.
Visual manifestations of emotions are a theme
in the Stormlight books. I don't put those
in in the first draft. Too much to keep in
my mind.
I actually have an assistant read through
and find any time I mention emotion, and then
bracket what type of emotion Spren they think
would be drawn by that thing, and then I will,
in a later draft, it's like adding special
effects to a movie, I will go through and
add them all in. This is because keeping--
I am so focused on character arcs and making
sure the plot works in my first drafts, that
I am not thinking about any of this.
What I do for a revision, then, is 1.0, is
straight through. My 1.0 draft is I go beginning
to end. Then after I finish my 1.0, I build
a revision guide. This is like an outline
for a revision. I go through the book, and
I've just finished it, and I'm usually taking
notes as I write of things that I want to
fix, and in the 2.0 I'm going to be looking
for major plot problems or major character
arc problems. Because that was what my main
goal was in my 1.0, and there will be things
I get wrong. There will be things I change.
There will be things that just aren't working
that I know I need to pull out and fix.
The 2.0 is to just get that down for me, and
I will do it by making a hierarchical list
of what is most important at the top, all
the way down to little things I want to change
here or there or include. The middle section
will often say things like, "foreshadow that
this character is really good at getting out
of handcuffs three times." I'll just give
myself a rule, three times. and those are
kind of the middle section, anything I can
do with a spot fix a couple of times. Anything
in the bottom section is things that are specific
to one chapter that are a little tweak. And
anything on the top, there's just too many
changes to make to check them off. Like, it's
pervasive through the entire book.
Something in the 1.0 section might be along
the lines of when I told you about Oathbringer
where it's like, I didn't know it at this
revision, but it's like this whole plot cycle
has the wrong promise at the beginning and
is pointing readers toward the wrong thing.
I need to do a major revision of this entire
plot cycle, so the promise is working. That
sort of thing, and I am just aligning these.
And then when I do my revision, I start on
page 1, and I have my revision guide open
next to the document on the screen, and I
just go through, looking to keep my focus
on the things I've put on here. I will actually
start adding things to the bottom for a next
revision, if there are things I notice I need
to do for another revision. But this one is
only these things on this list. I can only
do a certain number of things with each revision.
So let's make a targeted list. The 2.0 is
all the stuff that I know how to fix.
At that point, I give the book, ideally, to
alpha readers. Alpha readers are going to
come back, and I'm going to make a revision
guide based on the things they say. Sometimes
this will be stuff from my editor that'll
say, "I really think such-and-such thing."
I'll be like, "All right. I'm going to try
that in a chapter and see if it works." One
chapter, and if I like how it is better I'll
keep going, and if not, then I'll tell them,
"I don't think this is the solution." Or several
chapters.
But alpha read makes another revision document.
I add to the bottom of it anything I didn't
get in the first revision, because my focus
was on those top things. I sometimes won't
get to the middle or bottom. I will add those
on and their own middle or bottom. I will
add on new things that I came up with. Then
it kind of becomes like I am bug fixing while
I'm going through.
After that we have a 3.0 that is the beta
reads. Again, for me, alpha readers are business
insiders who can tell me if something is wrong
and how to fix it. Beta readers are generally
going to be casual readers or super fans who
are readers, those two. But the idea is that
they are not industry professionals. They
are my audience. How is my audience responding
to the thing I did? I want to know, in my
beta read, if Jar Jar Binks is driving every
character up the wall. And I might decide,
"You know what? I'm really to keep Jar Jar
Binks for the 10% that he doesn't drive up
the wall." I might decide, "Oh, wow. I have
made a major miscalculation in this character.
I need to do something." I'm just looking
for their reactions.
Personally, this is to prepare me for how
readers will react to my book when I release
it. If I get a good cross section of my readership
in beta reads, I will never release a book
and be surprised by the reaction to it. I
will then do a 4.0 that is changing things
based on what I think will better target my
audience, based on the reactions. Lucas famously
had the Millennium Falcon get blown up at
the end of Return of the Jedi, showed it to
test audiences, and they hated it. I don't
know what happened with Jar Jar. But then
this one he showed, and he's like, "Huh, let's
not blow up the Millennium Falcon." And you
know what? There was much rejoicing because
everyone was happy.
Then my 5.0 is my polish. Now, I've been polishing
all the way through this. boy, you can barely
read that. Polish, yeah. I've been polishing
all the way through this. Every draft I'm
doing some. But this is my last one where
I'm going to cut 10% of the book. I'm going
to try and kill every instance of passive
voice that I can. I'm going to try to make
things active instead of passive. I'm going
to try to use stronger verbs instead of weaker
verbs. All the stuff that makes a book more
readable, that's my 5.0. And 5.0 is generally
the one that I send to copy edit and proofread.
If you have one takeaway from here, it's if
revision is something that you hate, try to
make a plan for how you're going to achieve
a revision on your book.
One danger people do get into that I'll take
from this crowd over here, that we'll kind
of end on is, I have had people who have revised
the same chapter 20 times. They go to writing
group. They go to workshops. They bring the
same chapter, and each time they try to revise
it to whatever everyone said. At that point,
the chapter's not getting better. It is just
changing. It's becoming something different.
Don't let your revision become that, from
this crowd that say don't revise. But do try
to make it goal-based and try to learn something
new with each revision.
We'll see you guys next week. We'll talk about
character.
