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.