Welcome to class, guys.
This is Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy
2020 Brandon Sanderson lectures.
Thank you, guys, for coming.
You do not need to clap.
Let me start this class by giving you a little
history of why this class exists.
Way back when in the '80s, Orson Scott Card
was going to teach a creative writing class
on campus.
Everyone was really excited about it.
A bunch of people signed up for it.
Then for various reasons he was unable to
teach the class.
So a professor at BYU, who was a literature
professor who liked science fiction, started
teaching a class on how to write science fiction
and fantasy so that those people who had signed
up would still have a class.
It was popular.
People kept taking it.
It was very exciting for them to have a class
about sci fi/fantasy.
This class started in, like, '85 or something,
and kept going.
I was a student at BYU from '94 to 2000, and
I didn't end up taking the class until 2000.
For various reasons it didn't fit my schedule.
In 2000, David Wolverton, also known as Dave
Farland under his pen name, started teaching
the class.
Doc Smith, who had been the professor who
was teaching it, he had medical issues and
stepped down from it, and they wanted to get
a professional writer to teach it.
When I heard that there was an actual professional
writer teaching a class, I was really excited.
Like, the idea of being able to go and listen
to a pro in the field was really interesting
to me.
I didn't know the half of it.
That class was the single most valuable class
I took my entire career at BYU.
This is because, while my other professors
were really good about talking about things
like theme, and finding your inner writing
soul, and all this sort of stuff, they couldn't
really talk about how to build a compelling
character.
They couldn't talk about, here is how you
take a plot structure and you adapt it to
your own story in a way that is interesting,
compelling, and original.
They certainly couldn't talk about what to
do when someone actually offers you a contract.
None of this stuff could I get from most of
the professors.
Now, there are occasionally other professors
that teach who have experience.
I just hadn't been able to take their classes
yet.
I'm not saying that I'm the only one that
can give you this.
But I took that class and it changed everything
for me.
I had already written eight novels at that
point.
I knew how to put my proverbial shoulder to
the wheel and write stories, but I did not
know how to refine them, and I did not know
how to take them out and actually publish
them.
Dave taught me all of that.
Dave eventually retired from teaching and
moved off to do other works, and the class
was going to get cancelled.
Some of the professors I knew at the time
came to me and said, "Brandon, will you teach
it?"
At that point, I had sold a book, but had
not published the book, so I was very much
an unknown quantity.
But they're like, "We don't want the class
to be cancelled.
Will you take it over?"
That was 2004.
So I took it over and I've had the class ever
since.
My career since then has taken off, very fortunately.
Everything's gone very well.
But I haven't been willing to let go of this
one class, because I feel like this class
was-- if you can point to a single moment
in my career that was the most influential
in me actually getting published, it was probably
taking this class in 2000, 20 years ago now.
And so I thought it's a resource that I need
to make sure keeps happening.
So I try to format it in a way that it would
help me as a new writer taking the class.
That means we are focused on the nuts and
bolts of writing.
You can get, from other classes, great things
on how to kind of approach your theme and
things like that.
We're going to focus on plot, setting, character,
and business.
And we will have two weeks on each of those,
with some interstitials where I sometimes
bring in other writers to talk about things
that I'm a little weaker in.
Like Mary Robinette Kowal is going to be in
town and I've asked her if she'll come talk
to you about writing short fiction, and things
like that.
So I try to bring in some people who really
know what they're doing to talk about some
of the stuff that I'm not quite as knowledgeable
about.
The goal is that, like I said, we will use
a very nuts and bolts approach.
For the purpose of this class, I'm going to
pretend that you want to be a professional
writer in science fiction and fantasy within
the next 10 years.
You do not have to have that as your goal.
Let's make that very clear.
A lot of times in the arts, we, how shall
we say, we have this sense that is actually,
I think, sometimes detrimental.
And I can express this best by, I don't know
if any of you writers have had this, but you
tell your friends and your family, "I'm working
on a book."
And what do they immediately jump to?
"Is it published?
How much is they gonna pay you for it?"
Like, that is the first thing that people
jump to, unless they jump to, "Oh, you poor
soul.
You're never going to be employed."
I once had that actually after I got published.
It was really great.
It was one of those things you dream about.
Where you're like, "Oh, maybe someday I'll
be able to actually answer this."
And someone did.
I was at a party and they said, "What do you
do for a living?"
I said, "I'm a writer."
They said, "Oh, so you're unemployed."
I said, "I hit the New York Times list last
week."
It was great.
It does happen.
Anyway.
But you don't have to have, as your goal,
that you want to be a professional writer.
You can write because it's good for you, and
I really think it is.
In our society, if someone came to me in their
40s, like I am, and I'm like, "What do you
do?"
They're like, "Oh, I love to play basketball.
I go play every Wednesday."
I would not jump to, "When are you going to
play for the NBA?"
Probably not going to happen to a lot of 40
year olds who already aren't, like-- Let's
just say, Utah Valley 40-year-old guys are
not going off to the NBA.
But I would think, "That's great.
That's good for you."
Going and being active and having a hobby,
going and playing a sport, it's just really
good for you.
I sincerely believe that writing stories is
the same way, that simply learning to communicate
better, learning to take the stories in your
head and put them on the page in a way that
people will find engaging and will connect
to emotionally, this is just good for you.
So if you're in here because you're like,
"Hey, that sounds like fun," you are totally
welcome.
If you've never written anything in your life,
you are totally welcome.
If you are, like, thought you were signing
up for Chem 107 and you got here, and you're
like, "Oh, no.
I'm surrounded by nerds," you're welcome here.
Whatever it is you want to do.
If you don't even like sci fi/fantasy, if
you want to write literary fiction about boring
people going through boring problems, you're
totally welcome here.
Snide remarks notwithstanding.
No, really.
You are absolutely welcome to use this class
however it can help you to achieve your own
goals.
Oftentimes, I have people who just love to
game.
They are GMs.
They're like, "I want to build better worlds
for my players."
Perfectly valid reason to take this class.
I am going to pretend, during the hour and
15 minutes that I teach this every week, that
you want to be me in 10 years or less.
You want to be living, full time, off of your
writing, and being very successful at it.
I'm going to pretend that's the case.
Because then I can give you all the information
you need, and then you can take it and pick
out 
the pieces that you want in order to make
your writing goals happen, whatever they are.
Okay?
I do want to give a shout out to the people
here who do want to be Brandon Sanderson,
or, you know, a better version of him.
You probably, I don't know if your life was
like mine.
You have probably been told many, many times,
"You can't do that."
Or, "Oh, um, that doesn't really happen to
people."
I grew up hearing that from people that I
loved and who were good intentioned.
They really were, and they did have good points.
My mother, whom I love, is an accountant.
When I said I want to be a writer, she's like,
"Hmm.
Maybe you should be a doctor, and then you
can write on the side, because all those doctors
go golfing all the time.
You could just go write stories."
This was not terrible advice.
But it does get a little disheartening when
everyone you tell you want to do this for
a living either says, "Oh, great.
Where's the money?"
Or, "Oh, you poor fool."
So I want to tell you something I learned
by taking this class.
Maybe one of the most important things was
just that Dave showed up and said, "Guess
what?
I'm a professional writer.
I was a BYU student," in '85, I think he was.
He took this class in '85 or '86.
"And now I'm a full-time, professional writer.
Him just saying that made me say, "Oh, wow.
It can happen."
And people say it's a one-in-a-million shot.
Well, I bet I could add up how many people
took that class.
There would be less than a million people,
and Dave made it.
When I took Dave's class in 2000, there were
20 people in the classroom.
Five of us went pro in one level or another.
Now, some of us went pro as editors.
Some of us went pro in that we published short
stories in professional fields, but never
earned a full-time living.
But I was in that class.
Dan Wells was in that class.
Peter Ahlstrom was in that class.
Peter went off and became an editor at Tokyopop,
and then became a professional editor for
them, and then I hired him.
Kristy was in that class.
She is now a professional, full-time freelance
editor.
So we have two editors and two writers I know
about who went 100% full time with their writing,
and there were several others of us who went
half time, which is where I get my fifth person.
If you look at that and you're like, "Wow.
Five out of 20, that's kind of a one in four
shot."
I don't know, we might be a deviant group.
But the chances are better than you think
they are.
The problem is, if you went to, let's say,
your biochemistry class orientation and they
said, "One in four of you is going to be able
to get a job in this field," you would probably
be skeptical.
Particularly if they said, which I kind of
have to say, judging by my former students,
it's really more like one in 20.
One in 20 of my students, ish, over the years
I've taught this, have gone full-time pro.
If you showed up to law school and they said,
"Yeah, we're going to let one in 20 of you
actually be an attorney," you'd be like, "Uh,
no!"
Well, what's the point then?
So the chances are against you, but they're
not one in a million.
And people that don't go pro that took that
class.
For instance, I have someone in my writing
group.
She never went pro.
She's writing professional quality work.
She is a fantastic writer.
But she likes to write a book every three
or four years and publishing them is not as
big a drive for her as simply telling her
stories, because she wants to tell her stories.
They're fantastic stories.
I'm convinced she will sell one one day, pretty
soon.
That is not a fail state.
You have to be willing to accept that that's
not a fail state.
At one point in my career, this was after
I'd taken the class but before I sold, I kind
of had a come to Jesus moment.
I guess I can say that at BYU, I probably
should have come to Jesus before then.
But a metaphorical come to Jesus moment, where
I'm like, "What am I doing?"
At that point, I'd written 12 novels, and
I had not sold any of them.
I kept sending them out to publishers, and
I kept getting two responses.
Number one, "Wow, these are long."
Number two, "Can't you just write more like
George Martin?"
No, he was the person that was selling right
then.
His are big, so I don't know why they were
complaining about the first one.
They were really looking for Joe Abercrombie.
They were like, "Where is Joe Abercrombie?
We know he's out there somewhere.
We want to publish him."
They wanted short, fast-paced, George R. Martin
style stuff.
They just were rejecting me right and left.
I was not making any headway at all.
I thought, "Huh.
Maybe they're right, all the people who say,
'We're really worried about you, Brandon.'"
My dad would call and be like, "Son, your
mother's really worried."
Yeah.
I kind of had to ask myself, I'm like, "What
does my success look like?
What am I willing to accept?"
I had to make the call that if I died, let's
be optimistic, in my 100s, right, with 150
unpublished manuscripts, was I okay with that?
Was I going to keep doing this, even if I
knew I would never get published?
I realized, yeah, I would.
I would keep going.
Maybe I wouldn't go at the rate I was going.
I would have to find a real job, for one thing.
Grad school could only delay for so long.
But I was going to keep writing.
I was going to keep telling my stories.
And I made the call that I was just going
to keep doing this, even if I eventually never
sold anything and never made a living.
And that took a big weight off of my shoulders,
where I realized—
It is important to be chasing publication.
I'm going to tell you guys how to do it.
But you should be focusing on the fact that
you want to tell these stories, that it's
good for you, that this is something you kind
of have to do.
And not in this sort of mystical way.
A lot of writing classes I took would be like,
you'll know if you have to be a writer.
And I hate that.
Because I feel like writing is good for you.
And I don't think there are people who are
predestined to be writers and people who aren't.
I do think luck plays a lot into whether you
make it full time.
But you can divorce the "I have to be professional
and make a full-time living" from the "I just
like telling stories."
And that person, I don't think, I think anyone
can decide that.
If you want to tell stories, tell stories.
Don't listen to people who say, "You must
be one of the chosen few."
Um, no.
Tell your stories.
Tell them the way you want to tell them.
At the same time, I have to warn you, you
might not make it.
You might spend the next 20 years of your
life writing books and never sell one.
It's totally possible.
In fact, it's more likely than you becoming
me.
That said, everyone I've known who stuck with
this 10 years or more, and has written the
books, none of them regret it.
Every one of them is like, "Yeah, that was
great.
I'm so happy I did it.
So happy I kept writing my stories.
I'm sad I didn't sell.
Yes, of course I am.
I want to sell a million copies, Brandon,
like you did.
But it's good for me.
I like it.
The stories are great.
I enjoy them.
And maybe someday I'll make it."
You can shoot for that at the lowest level
of success rate.
I have written my stories.
I've gotten better as a writer.
I'm proud of what I've written, and maybe
I'll make it someday still.
Keep that in mind.
All right.
That's my kind of introduction number one
to this.
The introduction number two is, can you really
teach people how to write?
That's a question, but it fits.
Can you really teach people how to write?
This is something I have to ask myself a lot,
looking back at my life, my career, taking
the class and things like that.
What is the role of an instructor?
Other than like, the most useful thing I think
I could probably do is get up here and say,
look, you've got to train yourself to write.
You've got to spend 10 years, write a bunch
of different books.
Work hard at it.
Write consistently.
And that's 90% of what you need to do.
That sentence right there will cover it.
Almost every question you'll have for me in
this class, and I'll let you ask questions
about what do I do, most of them will come
down to try a few things, practice some more,
see if you get better, if you don't try something
else.
That's most writing advice.
So why am I here standing on a stage?
In fact, it gets even kind of a little bit
worse than that.
Because writers will give you contradictory
advice all the time.
You guys had this?
Some of you are nodding.
Go read a how-to-write book from a famous
writer like, Stephen King's On Writing is
a fantastic writing book.
You will read this, and he will talk about
what you do to become a writer.
You'll be like, wow, I guess I better do that.
And then you'll read a different book from
someone else and they'll be like, "Do it this
way," and it's completely different.
I often use an example of this being discovery
writing versus outline writing.
Writers tend to fall into two general camps,
and really it's a spectrum that you fall along
somewhere.
The two general camps tend to be what, George
Martin uses the term gardener, a discovery
writer.
I really like the term gardener.
What a gardener does, is a gardener starts
a story with an interesting premise or some
interesting characters, and they just explore
their story as they start writing, and then
they just kind of go wherever their winds
take them.
George Martin is a gardener, pretty famously.
Stephen King is probably the most famous gardener
out there.
They do not use an outline.
For a lot of gardeners, if you have an outline,
and you work really a lot on your outline,
what happens is, your brain feels like you've
already written the story.
You lose all excitement for working on the
story, and you get bored of it as soon as
you start.
Now, on the other side are what George calls
architects, another term I really like.
An architect is someone who writes way better
if they have a structure to hang their story
on.
Architects tend to work better in this way
because what they can do is they can outline
a whole bunch of stuff up front, and then
when they're working on a given chapter, they
don't have to worry about all the other stuff
because they've already fixed that.
They can focus in on this one chapter and
do this one chapter the way that they want
to.
The secret is, even the architects are discovery
writing.
They're just doing it in smaller jumps.
The architect is leaping between two bullet
points rather than into the complete unknown.
But architects tend to hate revision.
Architects tend to do way better with a structured
outline.
But these two are kind of opposites at their
extremes.
Doesn't mean you can't be a hybrid.
But if you're the type of person that if making
an outline ruins the process for you and destroys
your ability to keep writing, then you can't
follow the advice that I have read multiple
times from authors that say you must have
an outline.
So what do you do?
Well, you have to learn when to ignore me.
Me representing all the people giving you
advice about your writing.
You have to understand that writing is really
individual, and there is no right way to write
a book.
There can be a lot of wrong ways for you,
and there can be multiple right ways for you.
That's part of the fun of writing.
In fact, most writers use a different combination
of discovery writing and outline writer tactics,
depending on the book that they're writing
at the moment.
And they tend to evolve and change the more
that they come to understand their own process
and the longer they go in their career.
Really, this whole outline writer versus discovery
writing thing is a false dichotomy, but it's
a model we use to discuss how a lot of writers
work and what might help you.
You have to learn that whenever someone gives
you writing advice, they are saying, for me,
this is what works.
For me, I have found this experience makes
me write stories that I like.
You have to be willing to say, all right,
maybe I'll try that.
I'll give it a go and see what happens.
And treat these things all like tools in your
toolbox to help you write better stories.
And if it doesn't work, you've got to be willing
to throw it away.
Now, maybe not throw it all the way away.
Maybe put it in that toolbox and be ready
to grab it later on when you change in your
career.
But you have to be willing to understand that
all of these writing modes, these models,
these things, this is just all stuff that
we come up with to try to explain what we're
doing and to help us with problems.
There's another thing I'd like you to understand.
A lot of the stuff that I'll talk about in
this class is the sort of thing that writers,
professional writers, start doing by instinct,
rather than stuff that we always follow exactly
to the T every time.
What do I mean by this?
Let me explain using a Magic: The Gathering
metaphor.
We are in a sci-fi writing class, I once heard
a professional Magic: The Gathering player,
which is my nerd obsession, talk about how
they got better as a Magic player.
What they said is, when they first started
playing, there were so many little complex
minutia about certain things in the game that
they had to focus on those little things just
to make sure that they weren't making mistakes.
The further they got playing, the more they
realized that by focusing on things they'd
started to do those things by instinct, and
that they then had brain space to start focusing
on higher level, and higher level, and different
tactics in playing the game.
What really happened as someone became professional
as a Magic player was that they moved through
doing more and more by instinct and having
more and more space in their brain to focus
on different parts of playing the game.
I think this absolutely is true for writing
as well.
I feel that the more I have written, the more
by instinct I have been able to do simple
things, such as cut the passive voice from
my writing while I'm just writing a rough
draft.
The more I've been able to, by instinct, understand
the pacing in this chapter is too slow.
I need to speed it up, either by trimming
up here, or by making this next part come
faster, or by putting something in the middle
that gives us some sense of progress.
You start doing these things by instinct,
and what you can start doing is then thinking
about bigger and bigger and more important,
no, more important's the wrong term, but different
things to improve your writing.
What you're going to be doing as a writer
is, you are going to, by practicing, you are
going to start basically sticking stuff into
your instinct.
Your long-term memory rather than your RAM?
I don't know.
Computer people, help me out.
You put this in your BIOS?
I don't know.
I don't know computers.
Don't worry about it.
They get it.
They get it.
But you're going to be able to focus on different
things as you start writing, and other things
will come to you by instinct.
This is why the single best thing you can
do to be a better writer is to make good habits
for writing consistently.
Now, put an asterisk on that, because what
does writing consistently mean?
It's going to mean a different thing for almost
every person in this class, like I talked
about earlier.
For some writers, writing consistently means
working on their outline every day for eight
months, and then spending four months working
12-hour days on their book, completely binge-writing
it and being done.
I know people that that is their way of working,
and every year consistently that's what they
do.
They write their book in four months after
spending eight months fiddling with an outline.
I know other people who are more like myself,
this is what I do, who get up and they write
2,000-3,000 words every day.
I do it in two 4-hour sessions every day,
very consistently.
Build a castle one brick at a time.
Just keep on going.
That is my method.
For other people who are working day jobs,
they're like, that's a luxury, Brandon.
I don't get to do that.
What I get to do is I get to spend my lunch
hour working on whatever outline I'm going
to write for that day, and then when I get
home I have one hour after the kids go to
bed that I can work on my story.
Other people will be like, I can't even do
that.
Four hours on a Saturday, that's my best I
can manage, four hours a week.
This is going to be different for each of
you.
But the goal is consistency.
Your average writer writes somewhere between
300 and 700 words an hour when they are working
on new prose.
If you fall a little under or a little above
this, no problem.
Everybody's different.
But your average writer's going to be in there
somewhere, with 500 words kind of being what
a lot of people can do in an hour's work.
That goes way up, by the way, if you spend
a whole week thinking about what this awesome
scene you're going to write is, and then you
only get one hour to write it, and you zip
out 1,500 or 2,000 words for that one hour.
I've had times in my life where that's where
I had to be.
But on average, 500 words an hour.
That means that if you can find four hours
a week, you can write 2,000 words.
Your average novel is around 100,000 words.
That's actually a little long for your average
novel.
Which means that one year, you're going to
write a book if you can only find four hours
a week, one 4-hour session on a Saturday.
If you can't find that, but you can get two
hours a week, you can write a book in two
years.
Two years is a perfectly acceptable pace for
doing that.
Consistency is going to trump binge writing
a lot of the time.
But, asterisk, if you are naturally a binge
writer, then you should learn to work with
that, and try something else because it might
be easier another way, but if it doesn't,
then embrace this is how you write, and figure
out a way to make your schedule work for that.
It works really well for teachers, because
a lot of writing-- Writing is one of these
jobs that's very hard to do if you have another
job that takes a lot of your brain space.
A lot of people ask, what are the perfect
jobs to get while I'm waiting to be a writer?
I say, I don't know what the perfect job is
for you, but I can name a couple of them you
probably don't want to do.
One is be a computer programmer.
I took one computer programming class in college
at BYU 20-something years ago, and it was
really instructive, in that it was the only
class that I would do my homework for, and
then I would sit down to write and feel like
I couldn't write because I'd already spent
all this time and energy on writing code,
and it felt like the same sort of thing.
Your mileage may vary.
It may be very different for you.
You might be like, you know what?
I'm naturally a better writer because I write
code.
For me, writing code exhausted me for writing
stories.
Being a teacher is another one I hear from
a lot of people, that because being a teacher
is one of those jobs you don't leave when
you leave school, that it's always work, thinking
about the students, thinking about papers.
This can make it really hard to be a writer.
What tends to be really good is, like, laying
bricks.
No one tells you this in college.
They're like, oh, yeah, go get an English
degree and get an English major job, when
really, going and laying bricks tends to be
a really good job for a writer, because you
can put on headphones, listen to music, and
go through your plot outline or what you're
going to write that day, and then go home
and be relaxed and sit in a chair and write
it.
Menial labor tends to actually be really great
for writers, for that reason.
Kind of bizarre and inverse of what you would
think.
Most of us don't have that luxury, the luxury
of becoming a brick layer.
Maybe I shouldn't phrase it that way.
But most of us in a college setting need to
major in something that then is going to lead
to some sort of career similar to what they're
majoring in, and I get that.
Most English majors are going to go get a
tech writing job, or a copy editing job, or
something completely unrelated to English
because it's one of those generic degrees.
But I had a lot of friends who became tech
writers, and they still were able to write
their stories.
So it's not like it's going to ruin you.
If you're like, "I'm 3-1/2 years into a computer
science degree, Brandon," totally can work.
I have code monkey friends who write books.
I'm just saying, it's going to vary for each
person.
But this is what I found.
I worked a graveyard shift at a hotel.
I wrote from 11:00 PM until 5:00 AM every
day, and that's how I wrote books when I was
going to school full time and working full
time.
I had quite the luxury in that.
And you wouldn't think a minimum-wage job
is a luxury.
But having the privilege that I could just
get a minimum-wage job, and I didn't have
to worry about my finances so that was okay,
I was really lucky and fortunate that I was
in a position where I could work for $6 an
hour.
That was enough to cover all my expenses and
I could write books at work.
Most people can't do that.
You can't just go give up your entire social
life, swap your sleep schedule, and work a
minimum-wage job in order to become a writer.
Worked for me.
But maybe do as I say, not as I did.
In this case, where are we going with this?
You're going to have to figure out what works
for you.
But if you can be consistent, if you can learn
how to do that, then you can make writing
a professional endeavor to you, even if you
aren't intending to go pro, or if you never
do go pro.
Let's take a moment and just talk a little
bit about, this whole day is just going to
be orientation stuff.
We'll talk about random things like this.
I'll probably dig into the whole discovery
writing versus outline writer a little bit
more, so that you understand kind of how the
class is going to go.
But before that, let's talk a little bit about
being a writer and having a real life.
I think it's important to have a real life.
We presume that we're going to be writing
about people's lives and telling stories about
people's experiences.
And if we don't actually live our own lives,
that's going to be much harder.
I talk about this because the first day of
class 20 years ago when Dave taught this class,
one of the things he said that stuck with
me all this time, is he said, "I have a lot
of friends who say, oh, you shouldn't get
married.
You shouldn't have a family.
That will distract you from your calling as
a writer."
I haven't had that told to me a lot.
I maybe move in different circles, but I have
heard it happening.
Dave said, "I have found that having a family
has just given me way more to write about
than if I hadn't."
But there are some things I want to talk about
with this, to kind of help you guys as writers
understand this.
One of the biggest division points I've found
in relationships among my writer friends,
and this happens kind of unexpectedly, is
that the more consumed you become with your
writing, the more other people in your life
might feel like they are being left out of
something that is all-consuming and passionate
for you.
This is a real issue, particularly with me
up here saying you ideally want to try to
write every day for an hour or two.
Ideally, if you want to be doing this professionally
in 10 years, you want to jump start that by
writing two hours every day for the next 10
years.
Finding two extra hours every day can be rough,
particularly if you have any kind of social
life.
Not everyone can be like me, working a graveyard
shift and having no social life.
What happens is, with a lot of my friends,
and this actually, I notice this.
Let me tell you it through eyes of my wife.
Emily and I got married in 2006.
So she didn't have to suffer through all of
the working a graveyard shift stuff.
But she also didn't have to deal with Brandon
the superstar.
She could just meet Brandon the wannabe new
writer.
Emily and I, she came from the English major
world.
She was an English teacher, and I was a writer,
and a sometimes professor at BYU.
And so we were quite the good match, and we
had a lot of interests in common.
We get along really well.
But I can still remember one time when I went
out to dinner with Brandon Mull and Shannon
Hale, and we were all out at dinner together.
We were all chatting, and it was like this
wonderful dinner.
Connecting really well with these other authors.
It was one of the early ones before I knew
Mull really well, and it was really fun to
get to know him, this person that people kept
bringing me his books on accident to sign.
We both were like, when a kid does that we're
like, uh, we should probably just sign it
anyway.
The poor kid would be like, yeah, Mull, M-U-L-L.
We don't do that.
We usually sign each other’s books and be
like, "I'm the wrong Brandon, but I'm still
going to sign your book because you waited
all this time."
By the way, okay, you get lots of asides in
this class.
I thought I was, like, when I grew up in Nebraska,
I was the only Brandon, like, in my school.
It was a really original, interesting name.
I'm like, my parents came up with this great,
original, interesting name.
And then I moved to Utah to go to BYU and
there were five in my freshman dorm.
And then I realized, it's a Mormon name.
Who would have thought?
It's not in any of the scriptures, but it
totally is a Mormon name.
There's a ton.
Brandon Flowers.
Brandon Mull.
Brandon Sanderson.
There's a lot of Brandons out there with an
LDS background.
Who knew?
But anyway, I'm out to dinner with Mull, and
with Shannon, and we're chatting, and it's
really great.
We're sharing ideas about our writing and
stuff like that.
It was at, by the way, Mama Chus.
You guys like Mama Chus?
Thumbs up.
After the dinner, I turned to Emily and said,
"Wasn't that the best dinner ever?"
She was like, "You didn't look at me one time
the entire dinner.
I just sat there and felt invisible."
Yeah.
And you're like, oh-h-h-h.
Early in our marriage.
I'm better now.
I'm way better now.
But this is a real thing that I've come to
find happens, that because the writers kind
of get into their worlds, and they're doing
this thing that is, like, really cool.
Writing is really cool.
It's like this-- I don't like to get too mystical
about it, but you've got a blank page and
you make something out of that.
And it's like, what's in your brain, and someone
else reads it, and they imagine something
pretty similar to that.
It's like you can write things and people
across the world from completely different
backgrounds can imagine this thing that you've
written, and you've got a connection with
someone that is completely different from
you, that you've never met.
It's really cool.
It's really this purely creative thing, where
you're taking nothing and making something
from it.
I love it.
But you can get so invested in that that the
people in your lives feel really left out.
So I'm going to give you this warning at the
beginning of the class.
I'm going to, as a writer, push you to write
a lot.
But I'm going to suggest that you also learn
to balance your life.
Because it's very easy to burn out as a writer.
It's very easy to because so consumed by this
that it destroys aspects of your life.
The thing that I've done, this is, again,
just one of these tools to try, is that I
started realizing that when I was with my
family, I needed to be with my family.
This was a hard transition for me, because
I got married in my 30s.
I had spent a lot of time learning to be a
writer, and one of the things you learn to
do as a writer, particularly one who has to
work full time and go to school full time,
is that you start to look for those moments
when no one is asking you to do anything,
and you use those to work on your stories.
You carry around a notebook.
You carry around your phone.
Writers don't get bored, which is great.
People are like, "Oh, you were left alone,
by yourself, waiting for me to show up for
a half hour.
I'm so sorry."
And you're like, "It was the only half hour
that no one bugged me all day.
I got so much work done, even though it was
all up here."
I started to use driving time.
It's great for this.
Something about moving while you're going
and thinking, is just really handy for coming
up with ideas.
This is why, by the way, Kevin J. Anderson,
aside, he goes on hikes and dictates all his
books on hikes.
He uses completely dictation software so he
can be moving when he's writing.
I know other people who've tried it and it
actually works for them.
It's never worked for me, because I don't
think with spoken word the same way I do on
the page.
But I might be able to train myself if I really
wanted to.
But anyway, I was using all these moments.
And so when I was driving somewhere, my wife
would say, "I know when you're thinking about
a story, because if I say something you jolt,
and you look at me like, 'What have you just
done?
I was in Roshar and it was cool.'"
Now I'm in a minivan.
Where is my Spren?
I started to realize; this could take over
everything.
And if instead I started putting boundaries
in place to contain the imagination, and then
be with my family when I was supposed to be
with my family, my life would be better.
So at 5:30, I am not allowed to work on books
from 5:30 until 9:00.
Doesn't matter if I have free time.
Doesn't matter if the family is away or something
like that.
I have this barrier in place, and it has been
so good for my life.
Because it's also good to kind of step out
into the real world.
People accuse us of living in fantasy worlds.
They don't understand.
We're not living in fantasy worlds.
We don't lose track of the real world.
It's not like we are all these people who
are schizophrenic and can't tell the difference
between hallucinations and reality.
That is no what it is.
People always say that, and it always bugs
me, because that's not what it is.
I am constructing something.
I'm building something.
It's really engaging.
It's really fulfilling.
But it's not like I'm forgetting the world
I live in, and things like that.
Even if, when you interrupt me, I look like
I'm really annoyed, because I kind of am really
annoyed, because I was making a really cool
connection between two different parts of
my story.
That barrier lets me step out, live my life
as it should be lived, interacting with other
people, and it makes me that much more refreshed
when I go back to writing.
This is why I do two sessions, by the way.
Partially because I don't want to get up in
the morning, because I'm a writer.
I didn't do this job to get up at 8:00 AM.
So I get up at noon.
People are always asking me about it and they're
like, "Oh, you learned that while you were
working the graveyard shift."
I'm like, "That's right.
I did all those years at the graveyard shift
and it has changed me, and now I have to suffer
and live with this whole off schedule."
No, no.
I was like this before the graveyard shift.
I've always wanted, I like being up at night.
People leave me alone.
So doing two sessions, for me, from about
1:00 until 5:00, and then about 10:00 until
2:00 is great for my writing, because I have
that time in between that just refreshes and
relaxes me.
I get to go do something else.
And then when I sit back down to write, I'm
excited to do it again for another four-hour
session.
I recommend finding, and at least understanding,
what this can do to the relationships in your
life, and taking some steps, they don't have
to be the steps I took, to make sure that
it doesn't consume you to the point that it
ruins your ability to have good relationships.
On the flip side, here are some tips you can
give to a spouse or roommates, that you can
talk about with them, to help them understand.
Because one thing that people don't generally
understand about most writers, again, writers
are different, so everyone's different, most
writers, takes us a little time to get into
it.
I don't know if this is the case for you.
But you sit down with your laptop, and if
you were to time yourself, for me that first
hour, that's not a 500-word-an-hour hour.
That's like a 200 words.
And then that third hour is like 1,000 words
in an hour.
And then, like the fourth hour I'm starting
to run out of steam, and it's like an average
one, and the one in between is like an average
one.
So if I get interrupted for 15 minutes, after
I've spent 45 minutes, like, really getting
it going, what it does is it can reset me
back to the first hour, the 200-word thing.
What my wife didn't understand, and I didn't
even understand at the time, is that a 5 to
15-minute interruption can mean more like
a 45-minute delay in me getting to that zone
where the writing's really working for me.
Learning that, if this is the case for you,
and being able to explain this block of time,
whatever it is, is so precious, because it's
only at the middle where it will really start
coming and working for me.
If you can get your friends and family to
be the guardians of that time, so that they
have a part in it, so you're like, "These
two hours, make sure no one interrupts me,
and then I will be with you after I have done
those two hours, because I will be so much
more relaxed that I've gotten my writing done."
My wife has learned this.
She's like, "Wow, if he gets his writing done,
everything is great.
But if he doesn't get his writing done multiple
days in a row, he starts to get really anxious."
And she will tell people, "Brandon hasn't
been able to write in a couple of days.
Give him some space."
This is why tours can be miserable in part.
But giving her that sort of connection to
the writing, letting her in to the brainstorming,
when I talk about, "Oh, I made this cool connection.
Isn't this cool?" has been really helpful
for our relationship, and for my career in
multiple ways.
She's really good at guarding my time.
She makes sure that I don't get interrupted.
In exchange, when, not only-- Best-selling
books are really good for marriages, because
you don't have to worry when the money is
coming in.
If books aren't selling, it's bad for marriages,
because it can be all the stress.
So there is that.
But there's also the idea that we're together
on this, and we have a shared goal and a shared
focus.
Let me ask, before I do some stuff on the
board, just about discovery writing.
It's not actually stuff on the board.
You'll understand in a minute.
Any questions about what I've talked about
here, about writing life, about becoming professional,
and how you're treating this?
Q: How do you overcome the sense of despair
that you're not going to be able to make it?
How do I overcome the sense of despair that
you're not going to be able to make it?
This comes from a couple of places for me,
or did back in the days.
Because I spent a lot of time not making it
until I did.
One was, Pandora's box, I still had hope.
It could always happen.
There are a lot of writers who toiled in obscurity
for a long time, and then eventually sell.
Don't let anyone tell you that if you haven't
made it in 10 years that you just will never
make it.
Go ask George R. Martin what people said to
him when he was a mid-lister for 30 years
and barely was able to get people to read
his books, for a long time, writing great
books, and then suddenly he became the best-selling
fantasy author in the world.
Yeah, there is that hope.
You can always still make it.
Another is, for me, learning to focus on,
am I satisfied with the writing?
Am I proud of what I've done?
And making sure that I am.
Because it's a real achievement to finish
things.
I meet a lot of people who want to be writers.
This class excluded, you want to bet what
percentage of them actually finish a novel?
Not very many.
If you finish a novel, you are in a more select
crowd than the select crowd between people
who have finished a novel and gotten published.
The cutoff percentage, the fall-off percentage
of people who never finish a novel is much
larger than the fall-off between those who
finish a novel and get published.
If you finish a novel, you are already in
a more select crowd, the most select crowd
you could probably be in as a writer, if you're
looking at pure divisions of numbers, pure
drop-offs between achieving certain goals.
Be proud of the fact that you're finishing
things.
If you're not, we're going to work in this
class on learning how to.
Okay?
Because that you have power over.
Focus on what you have power over.
You have power over whether you finish your
stories.
You have power over whether you're consistent.
You have power over whether you are excited
and interested in the stories you're creating.
You do not have as much power over whether
you're going to make it or not.
That helped me a great deal.
Another thing is to be exploring other options.
Self-publishing is a real thing.
It's possible that you are totally of professional
quality in your writing and you just haven't
found an editor who's willing to give the
books a chance, and you belong in self-publishing
as an indie author.
It's also possible that you write things that
are so esoteric that you have a small potential
fan base, but you can be satisfied that you
are writing great books for them, and you
are publishing the books for them, and you
find a job adjacent to being a novelist that
is still really fulfilling to you.
I mean, there are a lot of things to do, and
none of them are things, like, none of them
are going to take away that despair entirely.
Because there's a part of you that's like,
"I should be selling these books.
These are really good books."
Or, depending on your psychology, "My books
are terrible.
I am terrible.
What am I doing?"
That's equally likely.
That one's more pernicious.
Let's point that out.
It is probably wrong.
But that's what I did.
Ask other people.
Ask other writers.
Make sure you're part of the community, and
things like that, because that can help.
I got published because Dan Wells met an editor
at a convention.
The editor turned out to be a really good
match for me and an only mediocre match for
Dan, and Dan introduced me to the editor,
and the editor bought my book.
Having connections with other writers can
be really handy.
What other questions do you guys got?
Anything you want to throw at me?
Yeah, over here.
Q: How do you get into that writing community?
How do you get into that writing community?
Well, you are in the right place.
Because after I talk about this next little
thing for just a bit, we're going to split
into writing groups, and that's part of this
class.
We're going to talk about how to do writing
groups and stuff like that.
Actually, you know what?
We've only got 15 minutes left.
Let's move on to that portion.
I'll talk more about discovery writers and
things another day.
Let's talk about writing groups.
For this class, I am going to require the
people who are in the 15-person session, you
know who you are, you've already applied and
gotten in, we will go and chat in private
after this.
That's the class I go to after this.
For those who don't know, there's a 1 hour
15-minute lecture, and then I take 15 writers
who have applied ahead of time and who have
gotten in.
They're chosen by Karen, my continuity editor,
because I don't have time to do it anymore,
from the applications.
And then we do a writing group.
We do a workshop.
Taking this class gives you a leg up to where
you want to apply to that one.
I will warn you, there's a lot more required
of that class than this one.
This one you show up, I give you an A. That
one, you're going to have to write a bunch.
That's like, you pretend for a semester you're
a professional writer, and you're writing
as much as that is, and you have to learn
to juggle that with all the other things in
your life, and it's training for that.
That class, I mean, I require 30,000 words,
is what I think we came up with.
35,000.
35,000 words in a semester.
None of your other writing classes will ever
require that much.
I remember when I took a 518 class at BYU
and they're like, "You're going to have to
submit twice, and both submissions have to
be 2,000 words."
Half the class was like, "Oh, no!
How will I have that ready?"
I'm like, "Seriously?
That's an afternoon."
So 35K.
I'm going to require them to be in a writing
group.
The rest of you, I will not require to be
in a writing group.
But I will explain how you do writing groups,
and I will give you the opportunity to split
into writing groups to get practice.
Now, here's the thing.
Writing groups are also a tool that work for
some people and not other ones.
Part of the reason I force the class to do
it, the 15-person class, is I want them to
give it a good, pun intended, college try
at having a writing group.
Because if a writing group works, it is one
of the most useful tools for you in your writing
career.
I am still in a writing group with the people
I formed a writing group from in this class
20 years ago.
Okay?
Dan's not in it anymore because he moved to
North Salt Lake and he doesn't want to drive.
But the other people are still in the group
with me, and they are the most useful group
of people for bouncing ideas against, and
things like that, that I have ever had.
When Dan was in the group, he got me published.
Peter's in the group.
Peter went off and became a professional editor,
and then I finally hired him away when I needed
an editorial director at my company.
He is just invaluable.
So meeting these people in this class was,
they were all in the class with me, and they're
all still together, was super, super relevant.
But let me give you the dark side of writing
groups.
Okay?
Dark side of writing groups.
One really dark side of writing groups is,
particularly newer writers, don't know how
to workshop.
And one of the things they'll try to do is
they'll try to make your story into the story
they would write, instead of a better version
of the story you want to write.
And that is the single worst thing that can
happen in feedback, is someone who is not
appreciating the story you want to make, and
they want to turn it into something else.
New workshoppers are really bad at doing this.
In other words, they're really good at doing
a bad thing, which is trying-- And they're
doing it from the goodness of their heart.
They want you to be a better writer.
They want to help you.
The only way they know is to tell you how
they would do it, which can be completely
wrong for your story.
This is extra dangerous if you are by nature
more of a discovery writing.
If you don't think about your story ahead
of time, if you're not working from an outline,
someone can come to you and say, "Man, it'd
be so much better if you did this."
And you're like, "My story needs to have that.
It was a romance, but now it needs a mystery."
And the next week someone says, "Oh, you know,
if I were doing this, I'd make sure there
were vampires."
You're like, " Romances have vampires these
days.
I'd better write vampires into it.
I mean, it was completely not a vampire story.
It was a Regency, but now it's got vampires."
And someone else is like, "Oh, I don't really
like stories with female protagonists."
And like, "Oh!
I'll change the gender so that everyone--"
You can just go completely spiral out of control
with people giving you feedback and you taking
it too sincerely.
Now, the good side of writing groups.
The good side of writing groups is they can
be a really great support structure.
Before you get published, having a goal and
a deadline for submitting is really helpful.
And it's okay to have to have a deadline in
order to submit.
We all have different psychology.
Some of us need a deadline, and so you can
create one for yourself.
There's nothing wrong with that.
Having a deadline, having a support group
of people who are going through the same things
you're going through, also of people who are
likely to give you good feedback.
A writing group that has been working with
you for a while are the types of people who
will learn, hopefully, your writing style,
learn to like what you're doing, and they
will be much better at giving you advice on
making the story the way you want to make
it, after they get to know you, and things
like that.
You can cultivate a group who eventually will
give you good feedback, even though their
feedback at the start is not that great.
A couple of guidelines for writing groups.
Okay?
I assume that this light turns on.
This is new from last year.
We stood up here like [eight's bane] banging
stones against it for a while and couldn't
figure it out.
I might have my AV guy come and try and figure
it out.
Eventually maybe we'll have a light up here.
Until then, I won't write in the shadow.
If you are a workshopper, giving advice, here's
a few points to give you.
Try to be descriptive of your emotions, not
proscriptive.
Okay.
Try to be descriptive.
What this means is, particularly when you're
newer at this, saying, "I was bored," completely
valid.
There's never a time when "I was bored" is
not a valid response to something you were
bored by.
Saying, "You should add a fight scene" can
be really bad advice.
Sometimes it could be good advice.
If you really know the person, and know the
thing, and you know the submit-genre and what
the writer's trying to do, you could be like,
"I feel like a fight right here would really
snap things together."
But it can be bad advice.
"I was bored" can never be bad advice.
It's always valid.
Your response to the story always is.
Now, the workshopee does not need to take
that.
They can understand, well, maybe you're supposed
to be bored.
Or maybe this book isn't connecting and clicking
with you, and it's okay because someone else,
that's their favorite scene.
There are lots of reasons to not take that
advice, but that response is always valid.
Saying, "I'm confused," always valid.
Doesn't matter if you missed something.
It's okay to miss things.
The writer needs to know if you've missed
stuff.
They may not have made it clear.
Maybe you just missed it.
Maybe your kids were crying, or maybe your
roommates were doing a raid, whatever it is
that people do, and there's like a Pokémon
that everyone needs to catch and you're trying
to read while they're all catching their Pokémon,
and you missed it, and nothing needs to be
changed.
But it's not invalid that you were confused.
Let them know you're confused.
Be descriptive rather than proscriptive.
This comes from-- There's this great thing
Hollywood does, and I've loved it ever since.
They do this test audience thing for a bunch
of sitcoms, and they will get an audience
together, show them the sitcoms, and then
afterward ask them questions, and the questions
are all about the advertisements, because
it's not really a test audience for the sitcoms.
They use the same three test sitcoms that
never expected to be aired.
They want to get your reaction to the ads,
and they don't want to tell you that upfront
because they want to get your natural reaction.
That's what the writer needs from you.
They need your natural reaction as if you
didn't know you were going to be giving feedback
on this.
Just reading it and giving them the feedback
so that they can be like, "Oh, that's what
I wanted," or "Oh, I was totally surprised
by that."
If you're the workshopee, write it down and
don't change anything yet.
That's what that says if you can't read it.
My handwriting.
Somewhere Mrs. Soukup, my 2nd grade teacher,
is shaking her head, because she trained a
best-selling author, and she warned him his
handwriting was bad, and she was not able
to save him.
If you're the workshopee, write it down, but
don't change anything yet.
Give it some time.
Give it some space.
Listen to the feedback and try to understand.
Try to get where they're coming from.
And understand if that's a reaction you want.
Sometimes you want people to be a little confused.
Sometimes you want them to want something
they haven't gotten yet, because you're going
to give it to them in a few chapters.
Maybe you're wrong.
Maybe you've done something wrong.
They're having the complete wrong reaction.
They're all laughing at this thing that you
thought was really serious.
Really important for you to know.
But stay silent.
Unlike whatever it is over there making noise.
This is good advice, particularly when you're
new.
Don't say anything.
Pretend you are a fly on the wall and they're
all sitting around having a book club discussion
of the book, and you're just writing stuff
down.
Prevent yourself from defending yourself.
Prevent yourself from explaining.
If you defend yourself, it's just going to
make people less likely to give you feedback
in the future.
If you explain it, then it defeats your chance
to explain it right in the writing and have
them get it, and you won't know if you are
able to get them to understand it through
your writing, because you've already explained
it and tainted them.
One more thing for the workshopper.
Be sure to say what is good.
The way we do our workshop is we start and
we make everyone say what is working up front,
so the writer doesn't actually change the
things that are working.
Plus, it's really good for you to get told
what is working and that your writing doesn't
suck before everyone launches in to telling
you how terrible your writing is.
So we do a few minutes of that, and then we
transition to things that could use a second
look, is what we call it in my writing group.
It's not things that are broken.
It's just things that the reader felt, things
that they want to highlight, that you may
want to have a second look at, stuff like
that.
All
I think you guys are going to enjoy the class.
I'll warn you, it's kind of like a firehose
thing where I just talk a whole bunch.
I try to make it entertaining, but if you
fall asleep, I won't be offended.
This is for you.
Come with questions, because I will try to
give lots of Q&A periods where we can talk
about things that are not working or working
for you.
If you're interested in being in a writing
group, hang out here.
If you're not interested in being in a writing
group, why don't you go ahead and take off,
and then I'll deal with the rest of you.
But anyway, enjoy the class.
Thanks for taking it.
