Bradel Bookwork – Creative Writing with Brandon Sanderson (Introduction / Giving Feedback) · 3:48am Apr 4th, 2013
Hello, wonderful people!
I'm kicking off a third (and final) blog post group tonight, with something I think you might enjoy: creative writing lectures by Brandon Sanderson.
If you don't know Brandon, he's one of the new stars of the fantasy genre and a man particularly dedicated to the craft of writing. I very much like his work, though I'll admit I've only read The Way of Kings and his novellas, outside of his work on The Wheel of Time. He teaches classes on creative writing at BYU, and his 2012 class is available on YouTube for anyone who's interested in checking it out. Everything's available through the website Write About Dragons .
My intention is to blog about his creative writing class once a week, on Wednesdays, for the next 10 weeks – until we run out of lectures. If you want to watch ahead, I certainly won't discourage you. I'm almost certainly going to do so myself. But these lectures come in hour-long chunks, and it's a bit much to tackle them all at one time. So if you're interested in joining me as I vicariously sit in on Brandon's course and discuss it, just click on the link below:
I'll admit, this first lecture is more of a class set-up lecture, but Brandon has some great things to say about giving feedback toward the end of the session. Bookplayer also has a good blog post on that subject, with a bit more of a Fimfiction bent. As someone who tries to write detailed, helpful comments on other people's stories, though, there's a lot in Brandon's advice that I find useful.
I have a real tendency to want to identify problems and fix them. And when I'm pre-reading a story for someone, I don't think that's entirely inappropriate. But at the end of the day, each story belongs to its author, and it's the author who has to make the important decisions about how they want that story told. When I see something I consider problematic, I usually try to brainstorm a couple ways the author might be able to tackle it if they want to. I still think this is a good idea, but listening to this lecture today has already gotten me to try to modify my commenting style and make it clearer that all I'm really doing, and all I can do, is give my reactions and suggest how I might approach things differently myself.
I don't think anyone really likes being told, "This is how you must write if you want to churn out a decent product." I lost my interest in computer science primarily because that's exactly the kind of feedback I always got in my courses. There was a failure to acknowledge the creative problem-solving aspect of coding, and creative problem-solving is at least as important to a writer as it is to a programmer, I think.
The class structure with writing groups, I have to say, sounds like kind of a fun thing to try. I'm hesitant to actually propose getting a group (or groups) together to try that, though, because I'm a PhD student looking down the barrel of a very ugly quarter of work right now. Organizing something like that is just more effort than I think I can put in right now. If someone else wanted to run with the idea, though, I could perhaps be convinced to tag along. And even if I can't be convinced, it's still a cool idea.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed Brandon's lecture. I'll be back next Wednesday to talk about his second one, on plot construction.
Next Lesson: Building Plot
P.S. If you're curious about the blog post groupings, I've thrown a widget on my user page to explain the breakdown and make it easier to get to those posts. I see Bookwork, Brainstorming, and Broadcasting posts as being things some of you, or other Fimfiction users, might want to access more easily.
P.P.S. I was tempted to toss this last bit in a blog post all its own, but I decided I'd just leave you all on a very sour note. If you're a fan of science fiction, you may know the name Iain M. Banks. He's a Scottish author who writes some pretty amazing stuff, in my opinion. He released a statement earlier today that he's been diagnosed with gall bladder cancer, and that it's not really treatable. His doctors give him several months to live. Here is that statement in full.
If you ask me, this is an exceptionally sad day for science fiction, and for literature in general. Mr. Banks is putting all of his writing on hold and planning to do his best to enjoy his last few months with his long-term partner, newly wife. Good. He deserves all the happiness he can get. He's certainly given me enough.
Interesting. I'll give the lecture a whirl when I have more time.
As for Iain M. Banks...agh. It's like losing a friend, almost. It's not for nothing that I put the man in my top four writers of all time. As a Culture Mind might put it, how wretched and wasteful to lose such a mind.
Thanks for the links to Brandon Sanderson, he actually seems to be a pretty good, down-to-earth lecturer. I am damned relieved to hear him state that inspiration and pure drudgery are both common elements (drudgery more-so), because that's definitely been true for me so far...
Iain Banks has terminal cancer? That does make me very sad, for him especially and for his fans. He is one of my all-time favorite writers, and definitely my favorite Science Fiction writer. Use of Weapons is still one of my very top few SF novels, and Crow Road for non-SF. Sad day.