Sanderson 2012.10 - Dialogue & Prose
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- Опубликовано: 27 авг 2024
- Brandon Sanderson’s 2012 Semester at BYU: Creative Writing, Lecture 10
This video is a mirror of the materials posted by user writeaboutdragons. I’ve linked together the parts of the lecture into a single video, and provided some notes with timestamps below. Enjoy!
*Notes*
0:12 / Questions from the class
4:45 / Dialogue
- Always tell the reader who is talking early in dialogue, unless it is really clear
- A “beat” shows what someone does along side their dialogue, and then attribution is not required. Put these things on the same paragraph
- - Don’t use too many beats
- Readers can read dialogue really fast, and will skip a lot of the beats and attributions
13:40 / Said Bookisms
- You should use “asked” and “said” in almost all your attributions; other terms will slow the story
- A lot of the other bookisms are “tells” and it is better to “show”
18:46 / Replacing adjectives and passive voice
- A lot of editors say “throw away your thesaurus”
- - The point is don’t use a word you don’t know just to expand your vocabulary; use it to find the right word you already know
- Using the right verb is the secret to good prose (adverbs and adjectives are weaker)
- - Find the right verb or noun so you don’t need the adverb and adjective
- - - “he walked quietly” is not as good as “he crept”
- It is okay to use a word your reader might not know if your context is strong and you don’t do it too much
- Cut passive/“to be” when possible
- - This can be done almost every time
30:19 / Styles of prose
- Brandon uses “Orwellian”: write so the prose is a pane of glass that lets you see right through to the story on the other side
- - The words are as translucent as possible
- Alternative is stained glass prose
- - Here the word choice adjusts the story behind and the writing itself is part of the story
- Purple prose is when it is done wrong. Using the wrong words
35:50 / Self publishing
- Ebooks sell faster than print
- Self publishing is much cheaper and easier than a few years ago (as of lecture date in 2012)
- Royalties are 70% (if priced between 2.99 and 9.99 on Amazon)
- The fundamentals have not changed in last 20 years, it is just much easier to do it
- - Your main hurtle is still: you have to do everything yourself
- - Getting shelf space is much harder without a publisher
- - Having a platform is very helpful if you want to self publish
- - All the marketing comes down to you
- - - Most people do this with a blog
52:17 / The mechanics of self publishing
- A good cover is still important; min will be $250
- Pay for a professional copy editor; couple hundred dollars
1:00:00 / Titles
- Shorter titles sell better
1:04:10 / Business models for self publishing
- For slow writers, self publishing can be bad for you; common model is to release as much as you can and price as low as you can, to get a reader base
1:06:32 / The benefits of traditional publishing
- The publisher does a lot of things for you
- Legal department
- 5K-20K paid for covers easily
- Assign an editor to you who can be your coach
- They get you co-op space in stores and on Amazon, which is very hard to do yourself
1:18:50 / Final questions on self publishing
- If you do a good job self publishing it gives you leverage with traditional publishers
- Short thriller and romance books (~8K words) sell best on ebook
- Middle grade is bad market for ebooks. YA/teens is fine.
The quest to find every last Sanderon lecture on youtube continues!
Thank you for posting this! I’ve taken so many writing classes, and Sanderson is incredibly good at making us “ non-professionals” truly understand why certain things need to be implemented while writing, and others need to be cut. Sanderson is a great teacher, and I’m very grateful for getting to learn from a master for FREE! Thanks again!
There are no rules. Do what you want. Don't let this hack write your story for you.
@@greatcoldemptinesswhy would he be a hack? If you don't agree, great, do your thing, but teaching people about what is understood to be the norm is in no way shape or form a 'hack' thing. It just looks like jealousy, really.
What a privilege to have your writing read, and critiqued by Brandon Sanderson.
Giving a like for all the effort zmunk put in.
Sanderson, wherever you are right now: Thank you!
When I recently revisited Tolkien, when Andy Serkeis read The Hobbit on livestream (if you haven't seen that it was wonderful), I noticed Tolkien does "tell" and then show, in a few places, and it works.
Was that tell as a summary and then show as an elaboration? I find that can work well.
24:39
This is how I imagine a 1920s Candyman would look at a funeral. 🎩🍭
Attribution early. This simple tip is so useful to me.
This was FANTASTIC ADVICE!!!!!! THANK YOU FOR UPLOADING!!! Also LMAO at the guy showing up late to the lecture by BRANDON SANDERSON at the 11:00 mark :)
When it comes to long titles, light novels are the biggest violators. The titles are pretty much the blurb at the back of the book.
You should look at dialogue tags as a piece of punctuation. They don't really matter that much. The trick is figuring out when you should use one over the other.
I think you should use 'said' 80% of the time. There's nothing wrong with using said. It's a practically a piece of punctuation.
The other 20% can be whispered, shouted, bellowed, shrieked. Use them sparingly or the audience will get tired.
But you cant get tired of seeing the word 'said' because 'said' is used in casual conversation ALL the time. So who cares?
There's this one other trick I use to make sure the reader knnows who's speaking. I put the dialogue tag before the diagloue.
He couldn't believe what he was seeing. Peter shrieked, "What the hell are you doing."
Oh dear god that hat
I had no idea...
ha you're funny I like you
George has his sailors cap, if sander stuck with it this could be his icon... For better or worse haha
If you can, use a less known word in a way they can tell what it means by how it was use in a sentence. The same principle applies to a neologism like covfefe.
The Lies of Locke Lamora is one of the best longer titles I’ve ever heard. And also among my top ten favorite books ever.
I tried reading e-books.....the only benefit I can see in them is in transport. you can fit a thousand books in a handbag and it wouldn't weigh any more than a single book. But for reading, I prefer paper print any time of the day.
It's not only transport, but also shelf space and price. My parents switched to Kindles because there was physically no more room in the house for more books. E-books are also often cheaper than paperbacks, depending on the publisher and maybe some other factors (they might cost the same on release for example). You can also get a lot of public domain works for free, like the entire works of Dickens, Austen, Arthur Conan Doyle and so on.
Honestly, I think you'd probably get used to it in time.
Yeah you just have to get used to it. Once you realize the advantages you'll see it's time to throw away those crusty old print books. And time to give up on tactile experiences altogether. Just get every experience spoon-fed to you through a screen.
Best of all it will prepare you for our future when we're we're all heads in jars, not doing anything or feeling anything, simply staring into the warm, pleasantly addictive glow of the screen. You'll get used to it in time.
Okay, seriously. If you somehow think technology has too *little* influence in your life, and that you don't spend *enough* time staring into glowing rectangles, then I guess you might consider e-books. Otherwise stick with print. Books should be a chance to unplug.
warron24
You don't go far enough. Books are too convenient. We should abandon them and memorize stories like how they did it in ancient times.
That way, we aren't spoon-fed anything anymore.
Get off your high horse, mate. Good on you that you can't get the appeal of e-books, but why act so bitter and archaic simply because someone is trying to share why they think E-books are beneficial?
E books are cheaper and never decay, it's superior in every way, especially with these 5 pounder paper fillers like Sandersons nonsense
Geert Matthys
Okay boomer.
Yah I've listened to all of these multiple times. Great to have on in the background(after taking plenty of notes of course)
His thing about not using too many beats, but that you should use some, is one of my main problems with Robert Jordan's writing style. I love The Wheel of Time and all, but oh my. Sometimes, it's quite hard to know who is doing what during a conversation. The person talking is rambling on, then interrupts themselves to say something like "Don't shake your head!" And I'm left like... which one shook their head? Why don't I get to see them shake their head? People in a conversation are aware of body language, so even if it is third person limited, the Egwene will see Nynaeve shake her head. People aren't sucked completely into what someone is saying to the point that they go blind.
@TheCoffeeNut711 I like it because it feels far more natural. People dont talk in monologues, and when they do, they take breaks to breathe and huff. Dialogue tags, when used professionally, can provide natural breaks in speech. Someone who is good with dialogue can make the sentences flow well enough that breaks arent needed. (I.E. Sanderson) But Robert Jordan's dialogue does not flow well enough to have blocks of dialogue. It isnt lyrical enough. And as such, it needs pauses between thoughts.
What you are describing is my main issue with the many self-published writers...even successful ones. They simply don't know how to write without using tons of narrative telling. I just looked at three or four space opera books on Amazon and all of them were filled with poor writing and observations that I often view as stage directions and info dumping. All of the good stuff that should be happening as character interactions is framed as narrative surrounding cursory dialog. And some of the authors have published many books.
There’s a guy next to camera, spam clicking his pen. I’m going mad
Shoutout to the kid with a Symphony X t-shirt at 11:00
When doge got tired of pretending, he finally claimed the mountain of lies to retrieve the sword of truth.
There's someone typing while watching the lecture, it's so relaxing to listen to.
it's like an ASMR video is playing in another tab
There are whole videos of people typing it's great
He keeps on mentioning "Joe Conrad" as a successful self-published author but I google search only turns up the Heart of Darkness author. Can anyone point me in the right direction to the correct author?
Ken Bruen and Elmore Leonard are great with dialogue.
Agreed. Leonard was the first name that came to my mind when he asked.
hey everyone! im writing a book!
How's it going?
@@chippsanders9614 this question hurts to read. thank you though. ill answer with a question. are you a writer my friend?
@@iosyntropy I am, which means 'this question hurts to read' requires no explanation 😅
Jane Austen writes fantastic dialog without beats.
Sanderson predicted Karen meme what a legend
timestamp?
Using the name Karen isnt exactly predicting the Karen meme
I hear Orwell's window pane analogy used frequently when prose is discussed but then in the first sentence of 1984, I see 2 to-be verbs and 2 back-to-back adjectives. Is this because writing prose has developed since Orwell or was he using effective exceptions to the rules?
So it's a bit of both. Active voice specifically has gotten much more preferred for novel writing today. You can even "convert" it in your brain to active voice and see how it sounds. His adjectives and adverb use I'd say still holds up. Almost all the time he uses one, is because it's better and more clear than a verb alone would be.
I once tried to excuse a certain sentence construction I had used by saying, "Shakespeare did it!" My English teacher replied: "He's Shakespeare; you're not." The same applies to Orwell.
Love the lectures! I’m also very glad we’ve moved on from the hat
This was REALLY GOOD, thank you.
I've always wondered why novels don't just use screenplay tags at the start. Tempted to just do that.
I think I have seen something like that in fan translations of Chinese novels. So Character x: "Thing they said." Not exclusively, but it's there and it feels really weird to a western reader.
How tf do u tame a horse in Minecraft
Justin S Keep riding it until you see hearts. That being said, you won’t be able to guide them without a saddle (which you can find in dungeons and abandoned railroads).
Thank you! Now I can show my dad I actually do know how to tame horses.
Find a horse, follow it around while watching educational material on RUclips, make sure Minecraft is in the foreground, then hit alt+f4. Continue watching educational material until you are no longer a waste of air.
You lunch a tree to get the wood, you get the wood to feed the damsel in distress
Master class. Every time!
Who is the writer he mentions at 2:16?
Michael Crichton
When it comes to dialogues: Elmore Leonard.
I love going to college at the comfort from my sofa :P
Icy Spice
“I love going to college from the comfort of my sofa.”
^
I couldn’t help myself. 😁
@@mightymouse5930 nice 😊 every day you learn something new. My native language is Slovenian though. I could teach you cuss, if youd like 😁
You must be loving this whole situation
The hells up with the hat are you a beat poet in 1950s New York?
But what if I'm a designer? Can't I just make my own book cover? For free? xD
I love that hat. 🎩 ♥️
Jurassic Park author writes believable impossible soft sci-fi
Anne McAfery uses a large vocabulary but gives context clues so that the word is already most understood.
Who is supposed to be doing the action, what is supposed to be doing the action. Remove passive voice.
Experiment with prose that draws attention to itself (stained glass) and prose that does not obstruct the story/action (orwellian/window pane).
He is wicked smart!
That hat looks like the ones they give away at New Year's Eve parties 🤣
Fart at 1:23:55
Was me
@@laylachisom8996 yep
only came in to talk about the hat
that hat DOU
though*
@@Fluvanceno need for such formalities my compatriot
Eh, 1000 years of Solitude is magical realism. Pretty much fantasy.
I'd argue magical realism and fantasy are very different genres. Just my opinion though.
@@joni1405 Oh indeed no doubt on that.
@@franciscoxavier7398 Thatt's not what you said
@@FlowLai it is one of the many genres within fantasy itself. Yes, that is what I said.
Does it differ a lot from it's cousin genres? Yes. Does it stop being fantasy? No.
M'Lady
Say. My. Name.
Heisenberg
Beetlejuice.
The hat tho
The mission impossible mask thing - we have that lol
🙏🙏🙏🙏