I think this is some great advice. A lot of writers want instant gratification, yet they don't want to work for it. Also, it doesn't hurt to be based as a writer, as well.
Exactly! Creative work takes time, effort, and practice just like everything else. While some might skate by on "art" alone - its a well structured story that brings people back.
@@LiteratureDevil Mmm-hmmm. Especially if you use the "make your audience wait to get fed" analogy you mentioned in that "Why Jar Jar Abrams Mystery Box theory is terrible" video of yours. No one wants to be patient, or "respect the process" anymore.
Definitely. I have a LOT I want to do with my epic fantasy series I'm planning, but I keep pausing to look at my story to make sure I'm setting things up right so everything is earned. I want every victory to be earned, whatever it is. Every power understood, even if I have a softer magic system. For a payoff, it needs setup, and to be earned. It's not easy and it never should be. It requires work and man I'm trying xd
@@No-XIV-Xion Or how I explain it. Every story needs a grinder. And the payoff comes when after 3 hours of grinding character finally breaks the grinder.
In one of his lectures, Brandon Sanderson (whom you should start reading yesterday) used the example of Picasso: When you chronologically go through his craft, you'll find that he started out doing ordinary paintings like he was taught to. Incrementally, Picasso started experimenting with ways to break the rules until he finalized the style that he is now most famously known for. Develop your craft.
@@LiteratureDevil One of my favourite rule breakers in fantasy is Andrzej Sapkowski. The way that he mocks fantasy tropes is very entertaining to read to the degree that you understand which rules exactly he is breaking. It is comedy at a technical level: You're being presented with a "frame" that you're familiar with and then something happens that, while it makes sense to happen, does not fit the conventions/rules of that frame. I don't wanna give specific examples because I won't wanna spoil anything for those who haven't read Witcher yet. But those who have will probably know what I'm talking about.
@@LiteratureDevil I agree. 18:08 Gerhard Richter didn't start off making Wild Paintings. James Joyce didn't start off mid sentence when he wrote his first novel, he worked up to _Finnegan's Wake._
Too bad Sanderson is a pretty bad writer... would not listen to that man. And Picasso? Seriously? I understand the thought of the analogy, but Picasso was a hack that made kiddy scribbles for a dumb audience that didn’t call out his shitty ”work”.
"On the first draft you write the story, on the second you take away everything that it's not the story" is one of the best teachings I got from King's On Writing. It also helps you to be more disciplined since you can write with less pressure knowing it doesn't have to be perfect and everything will be refined on the second draft.
I mean that goes for every draft. Usually it takes at least 3 or 4 drafts before you even sit on a decent product. Some chapters even more. But you can go around this a bit if you plan your draft and story well beforehand. Then all you might need is one draft + language check + final touches
currently on the second draft, God does it feel bad deleting things I added out of love :'v hopefully the end product is worth it your comment made me realize the importance of it, have a good day man!!
Another no-no I've noticed: Artificially nerfing other characters to make your main character extra special. This is always a mistake. If your character cannot be special in some narrative sense perhaps you do not have the protagonist you are looking for. I suspect this also happens due to a lack of research.
Alternatively if your character cannot be special in a narrative sense, that is merely a flaw that a potential ally or companion can fill out. Sure your character is a spirit and is incapable of interacting with the physical world much, but he can get places others can't, and he has a medium friend who can help him out. The dynamic between those two characters relying on one another can make for good story.
@@lucas23453 its more interesting if you have a group that has different masters than one who can do it all. The great pilot with the great gunmen who work together to flee the following aircrafts. The pilot has the skills to prevent to be hit and the gunmen can fokus on taking down the foes.
And how many great stories were never written because the author gave up writing for the same reason before the story even came to his or her mind. The more reasons not to give up.
The examples in rule 5 remind me of how people responded to learning Jussie Smollett faked his attack. Far too many people thought faking a hate crime was good because it "started a conversation". As if just talking about the right subject or condemning the right ideas is more valuable than doing the right thing.
"It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size." First line I read from Red Sister by Mark Lawrence. It absolutely hooked me and then he proceeded to work in a dozen tropes which often annoy me, but did so in such a way I realized I was getting annoyed at the idea of the idea rather than what was happening in that particular book.
It isn't, what it is is filler. When you want to write a book called 12 rules for life because 12 is a holy number in Christianity and it turns out you only have 10 rules then the last two become nonsense like "Pet a cat". I guess JBP should have watched this video before he wrote his crap-feast of a book. Had he followed the rule about being honest (his rule too) then it would be much better, and less successful, book. JBP certainly knows his audience and what they want to hear. Hitler he may not be, but Goebbels?? Yeah...
What froze me for the longest time was perfectionism. Sometimes I left my manuscripts simmer for a while and came back, only to think "God... This is cringe" and rewrite almost everything again, because, I thought, if I hate what I wrote, then everybody will hate reading it, right? Obviously, I never advanced at all, until one day, I just forced myself to write when I was incredibly uninspired... It was shit. Each word felt like a brick falling off a ledge and adding to the pile of trash down below. No structure. No flow. No style... But I kept it as is. The only thing I would do was just note the things I wanted to change later in editing, but I kept pushing forward. I kept everything as is. Then I was blessed to return once more, and write like a fucking madman when I knew exactly how to continue the story. Man, those times felt glorious... The words came out of my mind like I was telling a story I knew to heart for the thousandth time... I struggled to just let go of what I wrote in past sessions, and focused on continuing, but in the end, I reached the fucking word count, And finished the 0th fucking draft!!! To make the first draft, it was time to edit! But I left it simmer again before returning to it. After the obvious grammar checks, the style checks, and all the "technical stuff", it was time to implement the changes I noted: Some were obvious, like cutting up words in the clumsiest sentences or cutting the fat of a scene, etc. But before fixing the many other things I wanted, I decided to let a beta reader, well, read it. They pointed up some plot holes I wasn't unaware of, but _they liked it!_ all of it! Even the parts I forced myself to write and wanted to cut off and rewrite completely!! The best part is that, after a while, I really couldn't tell apart which were those parts... So, the morale of the story is: Just fucking write. Think about your story for a while until you know exactly how to continue it, and when you do, or even if you don't, fucking write it down! Your writing is nowhere as horrible as it seems to you! Inspiration is never a constant, so don't rely on it. If we were all inspired all the time, then nobody would need advice on how to write! And if you just wrote when you were inspired, then you would never finish! Instead, one needs to write... Obviously one needs a bit of information before writing (and this video alone contains lots of that valuable information), but one needs to write, inspired or not...
You will never, ever, ever write so good of a story that you cannot write a better one in two weeks. It’s just not possible. You would have to stop improving.
@@bunnywithakeyboard7628 Exactly. Room for improvement is vast... But sometimes one has to live with the words already put on paper, and note all the lessons learned for the next one. I think you can find more quality after 100 stories you wrote one after another than after one story you spent polishing to "perfection" in the same amount of time.
@@DonVigaDeFierro Iain Banks would write a regular novel whilst planning out ideas for a science fiction novel, then write the science fiction novel and publish that as Iain M. Banks to not confuse his readers as to which was sci-fi and which was literary fiction. He told me that he wasted a lot of time playing _Civilisation,_ but I didn't think it was a waste of time as it helped him try out different ways of running a society which then informed his galactic Culture.
@@____uncompetative Damn, that's interesting. Every time I learn about other author's process, all I can think is that I'm not writing nearly enough...
I started with trying to draw. I immediately ran into 2 problems: "Whiteout", where my focus on the developing canvas faded out the image in my head, and the fact the images I wanted to draw wouldn't stop moving. My last attempt was a tavern scene. An adventuring party fresh from the dungeon getting a pint as behind them mercenaries, rogues, and other fortune-seekers celebrated for one reason or another, a mage engraved protective runes into a friend's armor, and an elf and a dwarf had a very... animated conversation about a black stone that sparkled as if it held the lights of distant stars within. The people wouldn't hold still. The noise of laughter and drunken conversations and the dwarf's southern drawl as he mocked the elf's mysticism rang in my ears. I eventually gave up and swapped my stylus for a keyboard. I wrote from the perspective of the youngest (and thus least worldly) adventurer in the party that was to have been the centerpiece of the drawing. I detailed everything I could; how the characters looked, what they were doing, how they sounded and what they were saying. Most of it was inconsequential, mere background detail that, if it was a movie production, would have been left to the devices of the extras. I had maybe 10 paragraphs worth of pointless detail, but I agonized over it. I wanted to convey all this action and world-building going on in the room and convey it so the readers saw exactly what I saw and heard it exactly as I did. Personally, I have never been able to do a full draft before re-editing, so as I wrote I tore into it. I dissected sentences to swap around the word order. I replaced words with synonyms that more closely matched what I was imagining. I eventually wised up and began removing the superfluous details, until only the necessities of the characters remained, though I hated it and constantly sought ways to reintroduce them. I edited those 10 paragraphs into oblivion, until near nothing of the originals remained, and yet I wasn't satisfied, because nothing flowed and few of the details I had dreamed up were left. Frustrated, I went to wash the dishes and it was while performing this monotonous task I remembered a bit of wisdom I had learned when practicing drawing: "If you ever do a painting you are totally satisfied with you might as well quit, because you have nowhere else to go." And so, with the words of Bob Ross guiding me, I went back and looked over my scene again. I resigned myself to losing the details, but that didn't hut too much as I reminded myself it was just one scene and I could sprinkle them into a full story (the fact I rewrote them in a world-building file didn't hurt). As for the flow, in a bit of inspiration, I added a detail to the perspective character's drink: that it had an ingredient that screwed with a person's ability to focus their attention. The one added sentence didn't fix my issues with the flow, but it gave me an excuse to stop editing. And when I let others read it, they never noticed that it was choppy. Sometimes, we just have to stop looking at things as failures and instead turn them into happy little accidents.
The pacing in this one was perfect, didn't look away once. The only issue would be that little volume change near the middle but that's just nitpicking. I give this a 10/10. It felt as if the video itself was a story.
I'm writing a fantasy-horror series that takes place in a completely different world with a setting based off WWII, and I definitely needed advice like these due to feeling discouraged from writing lately. Thanks for this. I love your videos.
@@conorr2661 Yeah, I'm still keeping up. However, there was a rule I wasn't following that's "Taking Risks". I was going to have my stories set in a completely different based on WWII because I was afraid of having the stories take place in an actual historical setting but after a while, I decided "Fuck it" and went back to my original setting which is an actual WWII with the timeline altering due to supernatural circumstances. And it's turning out better than my previous idea. It feels more grounded, more honest and real.
As someone with an interest in writing, I definitely appreciate this video. I always knew there was something about modern movies and other works that wasn't hitting well with me, and this did a great job of explaining it; in addition, I can use this to look back at my old attempts to see what I did wrong (as well as what I did right). Just wish I could share this with my brother, who has been a longtime Star Wars fan but has gotten taken in by the Sequels...
Gotta say right here, I really needed this. I've been writing since I was thirteen, and my first story, looking back at it, was horrible, but I've been learning so much since then. I'm almost seventeen now, and simple to say that while the muse can be stubborn, I know that I can push through it. I'm so grateful to hear the last pieces of advice/rules, since they're going to be so important when I do take my stories from just a written document to being drawn under my digital pen.
@Bunny with a Keyboard Well... Sanderson don’t teach you that much honestly. He is kind of smart, talking around many subjects. They felt more inspirational than actually giving you the factual tools to be a better writer. His worldbuilding/Magic systems are quite atrocious so in that regard I would not take those types of advice from him. I would instead recommend for basics: Ursula Le Guins book Steering the Craft. (Can be found online surely for free). It points out exactly what you need to work on, has exercises and deals with both plotting and use of language. It’s easy to read, and you can just focus on the parts you feel you need to improve upon. Other than that: read other things than fiction for plotting/character. Read history for example. It’s a gold mine for content.
@@christianbjorck816 Sanderson's lectures are great at starting you off in terms of understanding why you may be finding conflicting advice or giving some starting writers ideas on certain models of how to start writing at all, but, well, I imagine if you want to learn the actual craft, you need more than sections of lectures uploaded for free on RU-vid.
@@christianbjorck816 They can be of great help, they just shouldn't be be all end all. I mean, for one, he himself straight up recognizes advice good for him may not be good for everyone (it's why they're a good starting point!), and for two... He's being paid to conduct the full lectures on university and the students need certain results to be even admitted to class, so of course he won't reveal 100% of everything he talks about in a free RU-vid video anyone can watch. :D
Can't tell you how much I can relate. I've wanted to for a quite a while now but am struggling with learning how to draw, at the moment. For various reasons. But it's good to see people replying supportively or with their own relatable experiences. And I, as well, think that, like Daniel Bretz said, it's never a bad idea to start.
im firstly a Manga/comic artist, secondly a writer and im on the brink of quitting it all together. this video gave me much needed perspective and knowledge. thank you so much LD
9:50 Avatar kinda has an issue with DEM throughout its run. The spirit bending comes out of nowhere, but fortunately, before he used it he first had to defeat the Firelord in combat, and then prevent the Avatar state personality from breaking his moral code and killing Ozai. And the episodes at the end of the series did focus on that aspect of Aang, how everyone and everything was telling him that he HAD to kill Ozai, that he HAD to do this thing that he knew was wrong, and that he refused to do. "Your spirit must be unbendable." It's still a Deus Ex Machina, but it's saved by the rest of the finale being genuinely great.
The dislikes are probably because he mentioned Robert E. Howard (twice), Jordan B. Peterson, and J.K. Rowling (four times), without being explicited negative.
@@promontoryid4632 Pfft, I hated Rowling _before_ it was cool. Never forget that the people-pleasing cow wanted brownie points for outing Dumbledore on Twitter after she _knew_ it would get her brownie points, rather than actually writing such characterizations into her books and standing behind a potentially unpopular conviction. I sure haven't forgotten. For all the memetic proclamation about choosing between "what is right and what is easy", Rowling proved she was down for "easy" every time.
I've never made it to a morning show. Streams are used to engage in the moment, where little breaks and lost trains of thought are just a person being a person. To go back and watch a stream later, after it's ended, leaves you out of the experience entirely, references to a chat you can't be in, opportunities for input you can't give, as well as frustration being perpetually behind everyone else. So while I wish streamers the best, I have no interest in their craft.
Rule 12: TEMPLATES ARE KEY 🗝️ I'm using Final Fantasy XIV Stormblood as template for a liberation story of my own. A good place to start is to work with completed works of other stories and make necessary changes to make the story unique from the original and make it your own. Look at other works, see their pros and cons, see what you liked and disliked about them, now see what you can do with that information.
Thank you for tackling “en media res”! I had to try to explain this to a college prof who wanted us to start all of our stories there and it got super boring. No one really understood why, they just thought “chase” or “fight” and they were all the same. I refused to do that and my stories tended to stand out more. The class liked that I started with the ordinary and the story made it extraordinary. I don’t think the teach liked that much.
Not gonna lie, kinda needed this LMAO. Have and still been developing this craft, mostly worried on what, how, why and if I'm even doing it right? To the point of deprecating denial for the concept being worthwhile or worthy for an audience. Though, It will most likely will end up making trash, especially as a amateur, but at least I could work on a point of reference and try make it not that trashy, or use it as a learning process and point of reference for future projects. Despite the overpresent dread to this craft and trying to refine it. And being a perfectionist fucker...its quite the difficult process. Still Interesting video nevertheless.
@@Polemicist_ a couple of minute, long minutes. One half making my setences, the other fixing typos and all that. It wasnt long, but it was short either.
Better to write a bad story than to not write a good one. Whenever I notice that something I wrote had a critical flaw, I have a sting of dread, even if I've found a solution. "What if I hadn't found that? My story was so bad before! It must still be bad now, only I don't know why, and because I think it's good I'll never find out!" Flowers grow from manure and dirt, not other flowers. Let withered weeds die and decay so they may become good soil for a better garden.
There is also a strange trend happening these days where other characters are fawning over the main character. It seems to happen often in comic books nowadays. But I saw it in John Wick 3, where the Asian assassin - who looks over 50 - gush over John Wick like a teenage girl. It is weird. It felt like an artificial and unnecessary way to tell the audience how to feel about John Wick. I hated it. And the Adjudicator... Edit : it also happens in The Last Jedi when Rose meets Finn for the first time. "wow, you are THE Finn? The amazing ex stormtrooper janitor?"
_The Force Awakens_ is an intertexual commentary on the fandom's rigid conception of _A New Hope._ _The Last Jedi_ is a progressive postmodern deconstruction of Campbellian Jungian archetypes as a more sophisticated ironic metatextual analysis of both the end of _Return of the Jedi_ and the start of _The Empire Strikes Back,_ with Cantonica standing in for Cloud City as a similar examination of the necessary symbiotic collusion of industry with a military industrial complex. As a standalone movie no one would have expectations about Rey needing training or Luke acting a certain way, however as _Episode VIII_ it is too divergent in its characterisation of Leia Organa as an incompetent leader and Luke Skywalker being in need of redemption for doing something totally against their established character traits in _Episode V_ as both competent and forgiving was correctly identified by Literature Devil as possible to write Luke as sad, but needing a lot more justification as to what credibly made Luke sad. I think Disney would need a whole trilogy about the fall of Ben Solo to the Dark Side for Luke to not come off any worse as his mentor than Obi-Wan Kenobi was with his apprentice Anakin Skywalker in the Prequels. Had Disney made _The Last Jedi_ be _Episode XI_ after four episodes that properly showed Ben's fall and the rise of Snoke to be undetected by Leia, then it would have worked narratively. People might still be unhappy to get sad Luke, but they wouldn't react to the flashback as bizarrely incomprehensible and agree that Mark Hamill was playing Jake Skywalker (something that would work if it were a standalone). _The Rise of Skywalker_ was written in haste, and edited on set to meet Bob Iger's 2019 deadline for the simultaneous cross promotion of _Galaxy's Edge_ and Disney+ with the completed Saga. Consequently, Chris Terrio could only repurpose his _Batman v Superman_ script and pit Kylo / Batman as a brooding vampiric caped crusader against the improbably capable Rey / Superman, who dies defeating a clone Doomsday / Palpatine and is then resurrected by Kylo / Bruce Wayne in _Justice League,_ which was also written by Chris Terrio, before being "vandalised" by Joss "boobflump" Whedon, before being partially set straight by _Zack Snyder's Justice League,_ which is not Zack's uncompromised vision as he didn't get to put Green Lantern in the movie as he wanted, and according to the increasingly credible conspiracy theory advanced by Ray Fisher, the removal of Iris West and John Stewart and Elinore Stone and Victor Stone being greatly reduced from a main protagonist full character arc to a token "Booyah" screaming cipher looks racist to me, so Geoff Johns may well have interfered with Zack's vision so to call it the Snyderverse and expect the same coherency as from Kevin Fiege's MCU is naive: www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/ray-fisher-accuses-warner-bros-execs-of-racist-conversations-during-justice-league-edit-4060875/#! _The Rise of Skywalker_ is probably the worst big budget Hollywood movie ever made due to the collateral narrative damage it does to seven _Star Wars_ films by invalidating all audience interest in Anakin's fall and subsequent redemption as he isn't The Chosen One who brought balance to the Force by eradicating the Sith, as Rey Palpatine is (assuming Rey isn't evil at the end).
Rule thirteen is the most important, don’t give up and eventually you will succeed. As for me I think rule eleven is my favorite. I like to go through what I have written and see how flawed it is only to rewrite that in a way that I like and I know makes sense.
*closes notebook and bows* thank you sir. I've been inspired to become a writer since I was a young teen. At first I wanted to write out of spite because I proclaimed that I could write a more interesting story than twilight (I had an emo phase ok? Lol) after that I wrote all kinds of short stories based on other works with my own twists. Eventually I joined a messenger board where a bunch of people role played their own characters on a flying ship. I got so hooked to the idea that I poured my heart and soul into my own character. But when I joined the messenger board....... it was full of angsty drama that that was more like reading a diary of an emo kid than an actual story. But I put too much effort into my character so I decided to venture off on my own and develop the world around this character. Now I have an entire lore and world that my character belongs to and I really really want to write stories about his adventures. But as I am an amateur I got scared of not knowing what not to do. It felt overwhelming but I discovered many writing tip channels including yours and they helped me immensely. Thank you for giving me the one piece of advice that I needed to hear. I hope this drive to write will not go away and that people will enjoy my story. I know that sounds selfish and pretentious but hey what writer doesnt feel that way lol
Dude warn me before you sneak peeks at my dnd notes 😂 My racist kingdom was built on the bones of a dead red dragon whose heart is also the portal to the nine hells and whose skull houses the records of the noble houses. Of course the players only knew about the skull.
@@puddlejumper6103 thanks! I like practical world building like that. My favorite place I've designed was a kingdom built on top of a mountain spring, but they built the cities on top of the walls and utilized hydraulics to get up and down if they needed to. They built during war time and were constantly under attack, so they overcompensated lol
@@puddlejumper6103 lol I would never let Netflix touch my work. They'd try to add diversity to my grab bag of fantasy races by insisting the male elf and male hobbit are secret lovers
Rule 4 is so important, a good beginning draws me in right away but way too often shows or movies really fumble here. Action for action's sake doesn't work. No context means no investment. Great video, really makes me want to try and write something with these rules in mind.
I'm not planning to be professional or write for a living by any means, I'm a programmer by heart. However I do like the advice for writing in my free time. Maybe after more writing and possibly practicing with this advice and others I'll publish something just for fun. But a good video overall
Same here. I don't want to be stressed for writing. If I finish something, it's cool, but if I never do, it's cool too. It's a damn hobby! It's supposed to be fun!
Never published anything, but I already printed multiple novels, and it's quite fun to think about the relation between the object and the content of the book. But it's so much expensive when you're making something elaborate, so for printing I recommend you to study fanzines to learn some cheap tricks. And consider publishing on a blog, it really helped a friend of mine when he was too humble to others read his work, knowing it's only unknown people who reads you can be reassuring and you got valuable feedbacks.
I feel that tug between writing and programming specifically, too. One pays the bills, one keeps you sane. Or so the theory goes. Unfortunately, I write like a programmer, and the way that programming is taught, you learn very quickly that the user is a complete imbecile who needs their hand held, their safety gates in place so they don't hurt themselves, and their ba-bas perpetually full of fresh milk lest they starve. And no matter how thorough your code, your user will find a way to get around all your safeguards and somehow get the keyboard lodged up their nose while they're at it, likely just to prove they could. I _very much_ carry this misanthropic attitude towards people into my writing, which means I personally never have to worry about writing Mary Sues. Instead, I have to worry about losing the reader. My ideal reader is patient with the foibles of my characters, but I have to keep that reader from giving up on my story before they get to the part where the narrative justifies their negative feelings towards my characters. I don't want my reader dropping my book instantly because literally everyone is a psychotic asshole in their own unique ways. People want to feel good about themselves because human beings are fundamentally narcissistic, entitled, worthless, and altogether broken creatures, and they aren't going to have the patience to get to the end where it turns out that even a broken character can surprise you when it counts.
Never before have I been happier to have Satan tell me to work honestly, learn from my mistakes, and that I can't let the fear of failure keep me from my dreams. I really needed this today. I'll keep trying and let you know when I have something worth reading. Keep up the good work, Satan :)
That last example happened to me with school. I breezed through high school with perfect scores to the point where I never actually learned how to study. When I got to college, I realized my high school didn't have a super challenging curriculum compared to other high schools, so I soon discovered how little I really knew. This killed my overall drive for learning, and I struggled as an average student in college. I've never been able to regain that mindset I once had, so I've settled under the general "jack of all trades, master of none" mindset. I don't mind it, but it's still disappointing that I wasn't able to bounce back as easily as I would have expected.
Thank you so much for making this video. On January 1, 2020, I decided that I would finally write a novel. 5 days a week, 500 words a day. I finished the rough draft sometime in October, and I've been revising it ever since. Every week I meet with a friend who listens to me read aloud and we work on fixing what's wrong. My manuscript is unrecognizable compared to the first draft. In fact, I would say another good rule to include is this: Have someone close to you who will be your editor. It doesn't even matter if they're a writer. It doesn't even matter if they read, honestly. My friend isn't a big reader and doesn't like fantasy. Nonetheless, his willingness to listen and offer advice has been extremely valuable. I still have very realistic expectations. I fully expect to garner a few dozen rejections before self-publishing. Part of me wants to skip submitting at all, given how unlikely it is that my work will be accepted - but I figure I might as well try anyway so I can get used to rejection. My goal is to get 10 reviews when I inevitably self publish, and carry right on to the next book. For so long I didn't write for the reasons you explain in this video, but now I realize that the desire was burning within me for so long, and once I embraced that desire, that flame erupted into an inferno. This is my passion. This is what I'm meant to do. I don't care if I never get any recognition. It isn't about that. So thank you again for vindicating me. It made me so happy to see my perspective on writing being mirrored here. Now, back to editing.
Hi LD. I'm one of those aspiring indie writers who has been motivated by all the terrible content from mainstream to write my own novel. I'm not looking to be a professional writer. I've got an idea for a novel that I'd like to formulate and write, turn into something I can see on a shelf in a bookstore one day and be a story others might enjoy. Not looking to get rich, just tell a good story. Got an idea for a fantasy novel. I only have experience writing a few fanfics/short stories of questionable quality so I've been soaking up all the videos like this that I can and it's very helpful. Though I will point out one problematic area rookie writers like me have that none of the videos I've seen thus far really address. I've got a lot of thoughts and ideas in my head for my story and I'm in the process of turning them into an outline, not just to help me organize my thoughts but to also share with a couple of friends I've talked about this idea with. Problem is, these friends have only dabbled in writing short stories like me and have expressed a largely passing interest in reviewing my work. Advice from videos like this are great for getting started but eventually there comes a point where I feel a writer needs a second and maybe third pair of eyes to look at it to help you spot what needs more focus and where you might be going off the rails. To that end, I need people who have both an interest in reading the outline and enough writing know-how to give meaningful feedback. Finding those people is extremely difficult. This also plays into a problem I'm sure a lot of writers struggle with which I call "theft paranoia". You hear stories about a writer sharing their rough draft with someone to gain feedback only to later discover that they've stolen your idea and published it as their own. I know not every person you talk to is at risk of doing this but it is a nagging thing in the back of the mind that's hard to shake, making it even harder to find people who can help you write. Thanks again for this helpful video and if LD or any other writers happen to read this, any advice on these additional points I've asked about here?
All I can suggest is write a second novel that is completely unrelated to the first before troubling your friends or a publisher with your work. Friends will not want to read your first novel even if they are keen readers as they will be afraid their critique will ruin your friendship. If they do read it and say they like it you will worry they are just being nice, or don't have insightful things to say to improve it. You won't be able to tell if they really genuinely liked it and there was actually nothing wrong with it. They may not be able to articulate what they liked about it. Same problem with a publisher, who you'll probably need to approach via an agent. Think about it. There must be so many people submitting their first novel to be read by a business and these are all complete risky unknown names. Better to get some confidence from finishing a complete first novel, put it in a draw and start working on your second novel. This will be much better, both technically and more importantly you will have probably found your voice. You only need to do two. The second one you submit to an agent and if rejected you send it to another agent. Repeat. At this point it is more a question of finding the agent who likes your voice and your prose style / structure / skill / imagination / characterisation / empathy / themes that affect them as a complex individual personally and there is no way to tell what agent will like what, so don't be put off by repeated rejections as it is probably not your writing that is at fault if you have written two novels at this point. Even then with an agent gained, you will not immediately get published. J.K.Rowling was rejected a lot. It can be a _Zeitgeist_ thing. No one is buying X at the moment because there has been too much X. No one wants to buy a thriller where terrorists hijack a commercial passenger jet and fly it into the Twin Towers right when 9/11 happened. I know of two writers that this happened to. One was the ex-SAS thriller writer Andy McNab, and another was a woman who was in my writer's group that met every week above a bookshop. So, a writer's group might be something you could think of joining, but you would need to be prepared to give constructive criticism to other people's stories rather than just show up expecting them to read your first novel and then skip out when they give you advice you benefit from and don't want to help them out with theirs. They will be strangers, and may become friends, but because you have established honest mutual critique early on as a foundation to your relationship you will be able to trust their opinion isn't being softened because they don't want to lose you as a friend as you spoke constructively about their work already. I was working on a science fiction novel which was about the global financial collapse of capitalism and I wanted this central image of two tall towers collapsing into each other like dominoes as a way to symbolise the collapse of the European Union's economy. Then 9/11 happened and it seemed very bad taste. I didn't have a plane fly into my towers, and they weren't the Twin Towers, but I felt I had to leave my preparations and decided I probably didn't know enough to write a novel, and was too emotionally overwrought when inhabiting my characters, so I felt I needed to wait and come back to my novel, or some other idea when I really felt ready, and have since spent a lot of time designing a new multiparadigm programming language instead, which suits me far better as it is either objectively right or wrong and not up to subjective taste. I mean, I can measure the relative gain in productivity of my language compared to other languages as a standard to see if it is a good way to get computers to do stuff. I can't do that with a novel, and I am also terrible at reading fiction, and have only read five books in my entire life due to poor concentration and feeling I would have done something different with the story than the author. I also didn't like reading something and then writing like the author I had just read. I had no voice and my ideas were being overtaken by reality. Then the Greek economy collapsed and I was like... what? Too much I had predicted in my near future science fiction novel was turning out to come true. Making a believable geopolitical future had become something that made me think that by the time I wrote it, events would overtake it. So, I became self conscious and a bit paranoid. You will have your own psychology to deal with when you project part of yourself into a fiction and you may become conscious of how you reveal aspects of yourself to others through the prism of your characters. I'm a bit more together now, so I might have another crack at writing something, so I found Literature Devil's video helpful, if intimidating at the work that would be involved to do it properly. Having done a degree in Fine Art it helps to have the attitude that you would paint a painting not to sell a painting or to become famous, but because you enjoy the process of painting and improving at painting and would do it anyway even if no one wanted your paintings or liked them. When you are motivated to create for your own primary pleasure, it is just a bonus to make something that others appreciate, and then another bonus if it gets bought by someone. However, the validation should be the process. If you do art to pay the bills then take commissions, don't speculatively toil on something and pressure yourself to conform to some imagined market that you conjecture selling into. That way you will enjoy the art for its own sake. That said, I did make the effort to design my programming language so that other people would like using it, and strive to make it easy to learn. I went through many drafts, and kept changing it, well past the point I was able to master it. I kept refining the design for some hypothetical programmer to be easy for them to learn. I know it. I invented it, but they don't and I need to make an extra effort to please them. If no one wants to learn my language, which will likely be the case as I have researched 1,700 programming languages only about 7 of which are commercially used in industry, then I will be happy to be the sole person in the world who uses my language as I know I like it, as that was primarily why I invented it, to suit me. However, my expectation is that by making an extra effort to make it learnable it may get adopted by other people. Not too many languages are designed to be easy to learn and are just functional hacks that those good at using anything bend their brains around to use. I wanted broader acceptance by those not paid to struggle through quirks and make a tool that creative minded people without much mathematical sophistication could make rapid progress with. Hopefully the extra effort pays off, but if it doesn't I will be happily using it myself as the only programmer of it. I can still get other people to use the programs I write in it. They don't even need to be told it was written in something weird. There will be no way of telling it wasn't written in C++ when it is just a completed application. So, I think you'll be fine and I wish you luck. Just try to enjoy the process. Have fun, and if you aren't enjoying it ask yourself if your psyche is getting in the way of your writing process and try to think what the matter could be. It might even help to make the first book you write be an autobiography. You know the main character. You don't need to start at the beginning, but could jump into the middle of an important character defining event that was important in your life, then have flashbacks that then establish why you were struggling and gained insight from your past history. It would be too private to share publicly, but could really inform a second novel. Write a third novel, then go back and read the first that was put into the drawer and salvage what aspects still intrigue you for a subsequent novel in the event you get writer's block. By holding one back in reserve you build potential for fiction, but don't plan an epic connected trilogy, or cannibalise any part of your first novel for your second, as otherwise the second will just be another draft of the first. Feel free to ignore any part of anyone's advice you don't agree with, try out your own path by your own instincts and learn from failure, and that includes all of the advice I have given you here.
I feel like a lot of this is intuitive to anyone that grew up during the golden age of entertainment, IMO, of the 80's/90's. If you paid attention to all the great works you point out and others aside, even the "b" movies and cult classics you tend to find solid work even among the minor mistakes. But I'm really glad to see it all laid out and explained in detail for those less educated on the finer points or academic side of things like myself. ;)
Because most writers at that time, and even from the 50’s-70’s read the classics and knew what a good story was. Now people don’t even read those, they just consume shit on Netflix and expect you can write a book.
Whenever I hear about rules of writing, I remember George Martin, and how he never appeared to heed to any. My first impression of his books was "isn't using a kaleidoscope of things happened in different places to different people a sign of an amateur writer?", but hey, bewbs, dragons and whassname sells. Some of the other madly popular writers like King, Castañeda or Salvatore makes one rather skeptical to read whatever's recommended on the basis of popularity alone, and you have no idea how much an author can suck until you have read some of the soviet-approved books.
It's caught up with Martin though. I doubt he'll ever finish the last book he's supposedly working on especially now that he has money to spare and laurels to rest on.
If you need more resources, I can only recommend Brandon Sanderson's BYU writing lectures, which you can find on his YT channel. He also answers writing related questions during his live signing sessions, which are also archived on his channel. And to quote Stephen King: "If you don't read, you can't write." If there is a particular genre that you have such a strong passion for that you want to create stories in that genre, you should first read a lot of (preferably wildly different) works that already exist in that genre. That way you learn common techniques and conventions that have proven themselves in that genre and then you can use them as guidelines for your own implementation. That is not the same as copying what others did.
Common sense rules and ideas are always something that needs to be brought up again. Especially because they take the rules for granted "Never a bad idea to go over the basics" - Every tutorial in any videogame
You have my deepest thanks for this video. It's not only giving me renewed drove to follow my goal as someone who wants to write and tell stories but to not give up ever again no matter how many times I fall. Thank you and I will take your rules and advice to heart from now on.
One of the reasons I'm still writing my fanfic is to prove to myself that I can finish something. I'm a panster, so I throw everything and the kitchen sink into a story and then go waitwaitwait this doesn't make sense. So with my fanfic, I'm working on sticking to my story. And finishing it and trying to write a little every day. Also Secret Rule#14: Don't quit your day job.
FanFiction is excellent practice. It's basically training wheels for any writer. The world, characters, and plots are already established. All you have to do it play around with them and see what kind of stories you can make.
@@LiteratureDevil yup. I've been writing since I was twelve. Started off with original stuff and then moved to fanfics and now I drift between the two. I also love the reader feedback with fanfiction, where when I work on my original stuff, I feel like I'm in a vacuum
This is incredibly encouraging. Thank you, Literature Devil, for taking the time to do this. As someone who has finally committed to really trying to become a writer, I find what you do both informative and inspiring. I've been told all my life that I have a gift for writing, but have never seriously pursued it until recently. Being told that talent doesn't matter nearly so much as commitment, passion, honesty, and perseverance is incredibly liberating. Looking at it that way, my success at writing doesn't determine my entire worth as a human being, so I feel much more ready to take my hits and do my best to learn from them. Seriously, thank you so much, your work makes a big difference to me.
For those of you wondering if rule 13 works, lemme tell you something. I've written 4 garbage novels in my life and never published (yet). I've written millions of words, but it wasn't until recently that I asked people to read my stuff and pick it apart. I have never felt more fear in my life than the first time I asked someone, who I knew cared about me and was only trying to help me, to tell me what I was doing wrong. And I hated every second of hearing how I'd failed. Everything I'd written up to that point was terrible to the point of absurdity. It was terrible. I felt horrific. Six months later, I compared what I was working on to what I had before. I'm not amazing, but I'm getting better. And I'm going to keep getting better. You will too. (Especially with these rules to help you! Props to LD!)
@@RTDelete Well, just ask him for more novels, and maybe tease him to keep him writing. "Maybe your hundredth novel will be the one I like." If he keep trying to please you, even if it sound way too much submissive to me, he will someday write something good, and from my experience as a "creator" crafting something with a public in mind is very useful to not fall into solitary crafting.
Anything can work if it’s in a story where one expects it and is willing to suspend disbelief in that direction. Sci-Fi and Fantasy demonstrate this well.
@@bunnywithakeyboard7628 No, not anything can work. Just because there are an infinite number of things that work, that doesn't mean some things do not work. Failed Sci-Fi and Fantasy works demonstrate this.
Having submitted my manuscript more than 20 times, I’ve only received one actual rejection email. All the rest was stony silence. It’s hard to gauge what you might be doing wrong, if anything, with no feedback.
I'm writing this for the algorithm and me. I've been attempting a novel for about 10 years now. In a year I want to be done with the first draft. Thanks for your vids, they are a big help.
I've had a bunch of NaNoWriMo drafts in my flash drive for years now that I haven't gone back to because of work or whatever (and several I never actually got done) and after going so long without writing, I've felt nothing but pain and emptiness. But last night, after watching Venom 2, I wrote up the smallest part of a draft for a review of both movies....and I legit cried when I looked at a full page. I wrote something and didn't give up. It's not done yet, but I'm writing more tonight....and the next night...and so on until I record what is written, post the video, and move on. These rules are so inspiring and, most importantly, truthful. Edison was right, Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. I needed this after spending so long in a dark hole of fear, uncertainty, and unfulfillment. I remember the words of Ms. Frizzle from the original The Magic School Bus cartoon: "Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy!" That is so true for everything it hurts. You just may be my most favorite channel on this entire site. Thank you from the bottom of my heart as a wannabe creator.
*Rule 14: In business, there are no emotions.* Many writers feel quite sentimental about the character or the world they had created for various different reasons. Either because the protagonist takes after them, was inspired by something they hold dear, or simply because of how long that world had been in the making. This should never have any thematic impact. Don't let the title misguide you, you are trying to spark emotions with your writing, it really is what it is all about, but your own should affect your work as little as possible.
I think Attack on Titan follows all (or at least most) of these rules. It asks questions & sets up mysteries then answers them when it makes narrative sense. Back stories are told when they are relevant. It's a dark depressing story the whole way through & even the ending doesn't cop out on that tone where most western stories would try to give it a happy ending.
This is an incredible video, sir. I actually might pick writing up as a hobby now. I had a fun psychological horror idea when I was in middle school I'd be curious to flesh out. I also have a lot more darkness that I've contended with in my heart since then that could probably be really useful for that project. Thank you very much.
@Literature Devil thank you, seriously. I'm sure you're content helps many. I figure if I indulge in this, I may learn a lot about myself. Keep up the good, honest work.
Breathtaking. I found a lot of parallels in writing with my own journey in animation in the ending points. I really want to become skilled enough to confidently work and animate for myself, and fortunately, I’ve had the opportunity to build my skills from practically nothing, to a full year’s worth of improvement, for meager pay. I’ve laid my videos side-by-side on my editor timeline to find that I animated as much as a feature-length film, with the first project being drastically different from the last. Thank you for the motivation towards self-improvement through a deep-dive into craft.
Thanks LD. I'm about to start writing my second book after a long, long worldbuilding break so your video came at the right time for me. You and mainstream Hollywood's quality are probably giving a lot of armature writers confidence they wouldn't have otherwise.
Never self insert and have a clear goal of how it ends, or at least have an idea of how the story ends. Hollyweird could and should certainly learn these rules.
Literature Devel: Oh my f##king balls. At 6:46 you perfectly describe what goes on in my head when I try to write. I get bogged down in engineering details and never finish the project. Have you been reading my work behind my back. Hell, HAVE YOU BEEN READING MY MIND YOU DEVIL!!!!!!!! Thanks.
This is some of the best advice I've gotten related to story-writing and yet it all sounds in a way familiar. I guess it does take some time for even older lessons to set in, in a new light. I do think the rules in the middle of the list (3-7) pertain the most to my personal struggles though. Definitely going to use them.
Your constant references to Neil Gaiman feel like subtle jabs at him in light of recent controversy, if I'm not reading too far into this. Of course he's also a great author and deserves reference.
Actually started writing this before he forgot everything he every stood for lol. But given what happened, they kind of are jabs now since these are call backs to what he USED to talk about - and then promptly brushed away.
@@LiteratureDevil Great thing about art is that you don't have to listen to the artist. The art will always outlast the artist, and Neil Gaiman and his work is no exception to this. Funny coincidence though.
The nice thing about standing on the shoulders of giants is that you can stand on the legend, not on the flawed human upon which the legend is based. Even when the Founding Fathers of America didn’t live up to the ideals of which they spoke, it doesn’t wreck those ideals.
@@sageoverheaven Fans of Sandman didn't like his changes to the story he did for Netflix or his race-swap of Death. And in response he went right to the racist card. This, despite the fact that we have an American Gods show and no backlash was made about that show by the same fans.
I spend my time writing extremely formal memos and "AWS 6 pagers" for my work, cybersecurity is full of reports at the executive level, and a lot of this still applies IMHO. Executive summaries and avoiding passive voice is my bane. Great video.
I wanted to thank you for this video and others. I've just started my own writing project. Your outline here has already given me some ideas of where to make some adjustments. Info dumping comes naturally to me, so that might be one of the biggest obstacles to overcome.
Ahhh!!! This video was so much better than I expected it to be. Actual goof writing advice. Especially Rule #11, which I think is something not taught or understood enough. Thank you so much for this brilliant video and channel! Keep up the good work!!!
The single most best advice I have ever been given for writing is: jot down the idea to a concise point so you can revisit later, the story will shift as you write it; The outcome may no longer apply or work, but the idea stays.
For those of you who dislike the idea of discipline, in my experience even that is temporal. You start to produce art when you have inspiration, so you then discover that is not enough to finish as many works as you want to do. Then you develop discipline, "I will do this x times per week" and along the way you may become more compromised, perhaps even getting better at it. Then your discipline is no longer reliant on enromous effort to heep pushing, but habit. And that's the great part: when discipline evolves into habit you don't feel like you're going out of your confort zone to meet your own expectations, it is now a matter of keeping the good work going and not getting lazy. At least that has been my journey with drawing in more than 7 years. Believe me once it becomes a habit things are only going better. Of course there's the difficulty of trying to venture into new stuff you have never explored before, but that experience under your belt can always help you with new things. I think this applies to writing too, but I'm still at the discipline part.
This video has helped me a lot. Gonna go write my first ever comic now, which i've been wanting to start for over a year. I'll probably be rejected by every single publisher but that's ok i suppose. I want to eventually be able to tell good stories, and this is a start :)
When I was your age, we were told there were only 3 conflicts: Man vs. Man Man vs. Self Man vs. Nature Then in college, we were taught 3 more conflicts: Man vs. Society Man vs. Technology Man vs. Supernatural I remember one guy thinking out loud to himself “Princess Mononoke has all 6 conflicts”. I suppose he’s right.
This is so good!💜 Thank you! I'm just so afraid to mess my first story up:( I've written and rewritten the first chapters sooo many times by now, it's just so aggravating. The novel is already done, but the more I learn, the more I find things that bother me about it. This is really the story I want to be "known" for, so maybe I need to put it aside for a few years and write something different, before I come back to it and perfect it:o
Back in school, during my final years, I had wished to become an author. I wanted to write fantasy and sci-fi, poetry and romance; I was in love with those genres! But I understood that writing is an art of patience, discipline, creativity and intelligence and I came to believe I had none of those aspects in the quantity that was needed. Gaining only an E in my English exam damned me and destroyed my hopes and dreams. I wonder that if I had seen videos like these would things have turned out differently? I suppose I will never know. Ultimately, it's down to us ourselves, whether we chase our goals or not. To anyone who thinks they should give up. AT LEAST TRY.
Currently working on the draft of my 3rd book, this was a nice refresher course to listen to. I especially needed a refresher on #11 since drafts are there for a reason, and it never ends with just a 2nd draft. Sometimes you need a 3rd, 4th, and so on. Also something to add with #10 and #13: Even if you have a ton of work produced, it might not sell at all. Having a day job is not the worst thing in the world and sometimes it can help give you the time away that you need so you don't feel burnt out because that can be even worse than inaction.
Rule #1 is SO IMPORTANT. Hint: It's not you, it's readers you want to sell to. If you don't know who they are, and what they want, you will not be successful.
Damn dude @34:47 I was nearly weeping. I'm not a paid author. But I have this story stuck in my head and if I don't write it down, I can't sleep at night. I have a "real" job (no offense to paid authors intended) and I challenge myself to write at least 1 hour a day. Some days it's backstory that I need to get straight so I know who is who, and other days it comes in a flood and I can write 10k words in a sitting. Bu there are days when it's really hard and I have to get through plot point A so I can get to plot point B. I thumbs upped this before you got to point 3. good advice. I need to get back to writing though.
