Lecture 2 Brandon Sanderson On Writing [PDF]

Zitiervorschau

Lecture 2: Plot part 1 Promise Progress Payoff Promise: Stories all make several promises at the beggining of your story and being in control of how to make the correct promises.

Tone promises: Mark how the work is at the beggining Make it clear and consistent with the rest of the work. Set up what the characters are, what are they going to do, what the arc is all about. Cold open: You begin with the protagonist in the middle of one of their previous adventures, before starting another one. If the cold open is of the same tone, you just made a promise. Clichés: People are already used to old story beats, it can still have impact if done very well and keep the original intent. Things you can do. Show the character not wanting the adventure, we cheer for the protagonist to go on an adventure.

Promises, who’s our character? What kind of plot are you giving us? Umbrella plot: We need to do X, and while doing X we fall in love which is the core plot. Umbrella plot is the presentation before the real meat of the plot, or the underlying plot.

Character Arc Promise: how the character/their situation is going to change. Plot Promise: Actions that the characters have to take. How to not be so predictable in the promise? Generally you can be more predictable with the plot, as long as you have and interesting character and setting to explore it with

You can give subtle inversions of the promise Put new plots that are not really used in the genre, mix genres even. Take a new spin on a familiar idea or mix two ideas together.

Either that or really nail the excecution. Do it really well. Do all good characters need to have an arc? Iconic characters: do not change from story to story and you can read them out of order, things like Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, then plot and story promises are more important.

You need to make good on your promises, or else they

Progress Progress is kind of the most important part, progress in the middle is one of the hardest things to pull off well. Progress makes the reader turn to the next page! Infernno Nivel and Pornielle, map of hell, what’s at the center of hell and can he get out? The reader has to know they are moving towards something, they are moving and it’s building to something they want to see. Illusion of progress, since you as the author are in control of the pace, you can write “A thousand years pass” and a thousand years pass in a single sentence, or you can spend 20 pages describing every minutia of a second. You have to make the reader think they are steadily getting closer to an inebitable and exciting goal is happening in your story, identify what your plot and story arc are. Why do they turn the page, what question do they want getting answered? Your sense of progress needs to go towards the promises, you can pull off going off tangents, but it is H A R D. What are some small increments I can make along this path that my readers will find interesting? Backslide carefully! Nesting plots, Umbrella, other plot, character arc, first in, last out, so resolve character, other plot and then umbrella.

Payoff Make good on you promises. Make a promise at the beginning, make progress towards the goal, then make it seem that the payoff it’s not going to work and then show it fail, then make it work at the end of the third arc. Plot expansion, initial promise is smaller than the final goal that is achieved, the twist happens, but they get more of it. Plot substitution, your initial promise points one way, then you convince the reader they want something else while still heading towards the initial promise, then changing it subtly as you get closer to the payoff cutoff.

Make the progress follow from the initial promise, keep it in consideration on the promise.

Lecture 3 Plot part 2 Discovery vs Outline Discovery writers experiment at the beginning and then revise a lot at the end Outline writers have an outline at the beginning like a lighthouse that gives you the high level stuff and focusing on small parts.

Sanderson Outline To editors, an outline is a three to five page document telling someone your story. Character heading: names of each of the characters, what is the character’s arc(s)? Who are they?, side characters in another heading, one or two paragraphs on who they are, Setting Heading: technology, culture, magic systems, worldbuilding, Plot heading.

Plot in an outline: Promises, Progress and Payoff. Here’s what the characters are at the beginning, now how do they end up? And then bullet point them in their journey from the beginning to the destination, theen you can pick and choose from that list and apply it in one chapter/arc, working in small parts. You usually want at least one plot archetype, one character arc and one subplot.

Progress: Plot archetype that you can use, style of plot, what you’re trying to achieve. Like being a heist. A master-apprentice plot. Romance? How do you build a story around these ideas? As you do an archetype, you can see what you love about that type of archetype or how you can give it a different way to apply.

Robert Jordan method List plots, begin one and make it wait, people find love, are sepparated and long for eachother while another plot develops, you can pause it for a bit and revisit later. Real difficult

The monomyth: He heroe’s journey James Cambell, character at home doesn’t want to go to adventure, there’s a call to adventure, they refure the call and then they are obligated to follow the call and head to the unknown. Then the trials and the road of tribulation, the character learns to overcome them. There is a mentor, then the mentor dies.

You get companions, then you head to the underworld methaphorically or literally Apotheosis, Atonement, Rebirth, rewarded with the Elixir and taking the Elixir back home and returning being changed so much you can’t stay home anymore.

The hero was almost always the result of being a child of divinity of being a child of unusual circumstance.

Three Act Format: Character becomes proactive from being inactive: “I will go do this!” Low point between act two and act three. Stakes change on some way, rising action and increase tension. Try-fail cycle, try, fail, it gets worse. Having Plots overlap is a good way to make things interesting.

Discovery Writing: Yes, but, no, and. Take a character, put them in a bad situation and ask yourself “what is the best way they can get out of this?” If yes, you add a but where something goes wrong, if no then they deal with those consequences AND extra ones for failing.

Q&A How long do you have to spend in the introduction? In novels the introduction should happen at a faster pace that you’re comfortable with, specially as a new writer, you have to sell the reader on the character’s personality and spending time in their head. Readers come with a certain amount of leeway, if you have a track record out of good payoffs, you have more leeway than a new one. Make it as short as possible for the type of story you’re trying to tell.

How to make side plot relevant? Make sure that the reader is invested and interested about the side character(s) and connect the characters to the main plot. Remember to keep them tied to the promise. See to it that the character follows their motivations. Show how it’s going to combine or influence the main story. Remember progress! You can show a new perspective on the A plot, follow the same characters, but showing the world through a different character’s eyes. Everyone’s the protagonist of their own story.

How to avoid writing twists for twists sake? Ask yourself why are you adding twists, what emotion do you want to evoke? What purpose does it follow? Taking the reader’s expectation and using it against it can be powerful, but thread with caution. First book of a friend didn’t take off. “Well, it felt like a Terry Brooks quest fantasy and I was bored out of it” “But ¾ of the way in, there’s a turn!” Well, first, people that want the twist, have to wait until ¾ in, and the people that actually enjoy the base work have an enjoyable ¾ and then don’t like the subversion! Don’t undermine and try to expand and escalate the conflict.

How to make an episodic work a page turner? Keep them interested by leaving plot hooks and cliffhangers at the end of the episode, dirty trick, but it works! Make the next thing interesting too! Otherwise the reader is going to feel cheated.

Is there always a twist? Not necessarily, you usually need escalation, things get worse, the status quo changes for the worse

Viewpoints There are three viewpoints

Omnicient Tension based on expecting and anticipation, hard and not that used these days. Present narrator: There’s a storyteller tells you the story, the narrator jumps all around telling you things, knowing some details they shouldn’t. True omnicient: You as the reader have access to all views and emotions? Dune is the quintessential example of this. Limited: Most common, for a given scene you pick one character’s viewpoint and stick with it, with no extra information, classified as Omnicient because you jump between viewpoints. It lets you have reliable narrations. There’s some distance between reality and the character’s view, better for large casts.

First person If the character voice is interesting, you can get away with murder. Progress is character based. Epistolary: All of the story is told by ephemera written down, like Journals and people’s diaries.

This is basically a combination of media that narrate the story, exchanging letters. Epistolary works well for mystery. Very immersive, tons of lore and ephemera. Easiest of all of this forms to hide information to the reader while feeling fair. Stretches suspension of disbelief. Flashback: Classic first person, someone is telling you the story, the character is basically the character now telling you the person they were. “Come together by the fire, I’m telling a story” usually past tense.

You generally lose tension by knowing the character lives. Biggest selling point is giving character voice with the contrast of past character and present character. The present narrator can give importance without it feeling like cheating. Cinematic: Standard, being told in first person, but it’s like seeing the character’s thoughts in the first person. Present tense usually. More personal than limited, allows for unreliable narrator. The more voices you add the harder it is for the reader to follow and loses the personal connection.

Second person You did this, you did that, broken earth trilogy, choose your own adventure books. Don’t do it unless you want to make it your selling point and you know what you’re doing.

One way to have structure it’s good to change to the type of narration that works best, but working towards it.