Scaricare "Sanderson 2013.2 - General World building"

Brandon Sanderson’s 2013 Semester at BYU: Creative Writing, Lecture 2 This video is a mirror of the materials posted by user writeaboutdragons. I’ve provided some notes with timestamps below, and occasional color correction. Enjoy! **Notes** 2:00 / Writing stories - Plot, Setting and Character are the three elements of a story that meet over conflict - Irony: world-building defines SF/F, yet it is generally the least important thing in a good story 7:02 / Info dumps - Avoid info dumps, particularly at the start of the story - Always be in-character - Writing should be lean, but this can be cleaned up in later drafts 9:40 / Learning curves - How long it takes for the reader to get proficiency in your world - All books have a curve for the reader to learn the setting, conflicts, etc - Lots of books choose their learning curve very deliberately 13:50 / Tools for keeping YA learning curves lower - Often the MC will start in the real world before going to fantasy world; this lowers learning curve - - Reader only has to get used to a few things at a time - “Watson” character is someone in the book who doesn’t know the same things the reader doesn’t know, so you have an excuse to explain things to the character (and thus reader) - First person protagonist allows you to info dump in character easier 19:40 / Familiar vs Strange - Each genre expects a certain balance, which changes over time 24:00 / Example trend: gritty from Game of Thrones 27:56 / Generating physical setting and cultural setting - physical= cool stuff that would be there even if people didn’t exist - cultural= cool stuff that is only there because of the people - Take the most chances to do something original in your setting 36:55 / Show vs Tell: ways to make info interesting - Dialogue is more interesting to a reader than description, so have people discuss things - Inner thoughts that show a reaction to something instead of describing it - Description through a character lens 45:34 / Focusing your story - Avoid world-builder’s disease - Pick a couple things to emphasize and make unique, don’t try to do them all 53:10 / Start small if you want to be a career writer - Very risky to put all your eggs in one basket 1:02:12 / Question on world building - What do you focus on when the world is not very different? - How do you focus on setting without overemphasizing it? - Before you are established, you can’t test reader patience very much 1:09:28 / Magic and satisfying resolutions - Them more you want magic to resolve conflict, the better your readers need to understand the magic system - - Really a comment about foreshadowing - Limitations are more important than powers themselves