/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19325190]

What the fuck, Brandon Sanderson is a professor of creative writing?
>Sanderson is adjunct faculty at Brigham Young University, teaching a creative writing course once per year.[50][51]

[Anonymous No.19325205]

yes, his recorded lectures on how to be a smoothbrained genre hack are freely available on youtube.

[Anonymous No.19325238]

I watched some of his lectures just to see what he has to say about constructing plots (because, let’s be honest, his plots are the only thing even remotely noteworthy about his books) but yeah

[Anonymous No.19325344]

>>19325205
The funny thing is nothing that he teaches in those lectures will actually help someone become a genre hack. There are secrets to writing books that sell, and Sanderson definitely knows them, but he doesn't teach them in those lectures. He just gives people the stuff they want to hear, like a whole section about worldbuilding

[Anonymous No.19325351]

>>19325344
What are the secrets to writing books that sell, assuming Sanderson does not teach them?

[Anonymous No.19325433]

>>19325351
Power fantasy - in tandem of taking advantage of popular trends within specific consumer groups, is what actually sells. Great books that are written in a nuanced way will never outcompete the normie powerfantasy coom-garbage because at the end of the day there are more dumbos than there are intelligent people, which in economic terms means that it is more profitable to focus on the lowest common denominator.

The easiest example of this is the female lit. market. It's littered with trash but chicks seem to eat it up because it has all the female power fantasy tropes they like: nothing special girl being desired by powerful males who can't contain their desire etc.

But to be fair, the male side isn't much better in that regard, it's just that we have a lot of outliers who enjoy actual quality, something which is almost unheard of in female side of the equation.

[Anonymous No.19325444]

>>19325433
>sanderson is secretly some publishing genius but refuses to reveal his mastermind techniques because... he just does okay

big kek

[Anonymous No.19325448]

>Modern education.

[Anonymous No.19325470]

>>19325444
He isn't a genius, and that is the final redpill of publishing. You just need to strike the right note and give people what they want, and that's what he does. His books are objectively shit and his prose is retarded, yet he is still popular.

Unfortunately Mc'Donalds of fantasy happens to mog a fine 5-star restoraunt of quality and nuance.

Such is the way of things.

[Anonymous No.19325489]

>>19325190
>And the blind will lead the blind.
Sanderson's prose is so bland it's actually a struggle to go through, even though you can tell he tries to have the easiest possible style.
And his characters, the situations they find themselves in and the solutions they choose are all clichèd as all hell.

What a shit writer, my God.

[Anonymous No.19325491]

Even his "fans" shit on him.

I don't understand these people.

[Anonymous No.19325492]

>>19325190
Does he have down syndrome?

[Anonymous No.19325495]

>>19325433
>the female lit. market. It's littered with trash
How dare you?! ROONEYCHADS ASSEMBLE!

[Anonymous No.19325503]

>>19325433
>the male side isn't much better in that regard, it's just that we have a lot of outliers who enjoy actual quality, something which is almost unheard of in female side of the equation.
All the studies on IQ and personality found that women tend to be more mediocre, more clustered towards the peak of the bell curve. This means that they have fewer utter morons, but also fewer smart and genuinely creative individuals.

[Anonymous No.19325505]

>>19325470
well no shit i'm sure he knows and tells his students all the time that his level of success isn't a guarantee. getting "good" (by his standards or otherwise) at writing is just a way to enter the lottery, but you have to have a ticket in the first place.

[Anonymous No.19325511]

Why does he wear the fedora?

[Anonymous No.19325516]

>>19325503
they are also more agreeable, so they are less likely to go completely against the grain.

[Anonymous No.19325533]

>>19325190
Yes brandon, take the brendan fraser pill

[Anonymous No.19325582]

>>19325190
>adjunct

[Anonymous No.19325593]

>>19325351
I'm not this anon >>19325433
Honestly that's the exact opposite of what I meant.

The point is, I think we could reasonably say his courses are for aspiring writers. That's 90% of the audience, if not more. People who want to write, or do write, but have not published and are not professional writers. And most of those people are experts at being aspiring writers. For example, they talk about "plotting vs. pantsing," which is the most bullshit dichotomy ever. Actual professional writers are not sitting around talking with each other about whether they are plotters or pantsers. But that's the shit the people in Sanderson's audience lap up, so he feeds it to them. It's the same thing with worldbuilding. I guarantee you most of the fuckers in his audience have folders upon folders on the computer full of bullshit worldbuilding. Lists of spaceship classes and special military ranks, and cultural trivia, and pantheons of gods and little maps they made in Inkarnate. But they haven't written word one of their actual book. Or they have a few chapters, but they grind to a halt, and they think "oh if I can just get my worldbuilding right, then the story will come to me." No working professional writers work this way, but Sanderson knows this is what his audience wants so he does a whole section on worldbuilding.

The single solitary thing aspiring writers and beginning writers need to be working on are openings. Book openings, chapter openings, scene openings. They need to practice writing about setting through the five senses, giving the POV character opinions, and having those opinions connect somehow to the characters history. That's all beginning writers should be working on. If they can't do that, nobody will read their work. And before anyone says this stuff is obvious or easy, go join your local writer's workshop and look at the shit people write. Look at their openings. They aren't doing this. At least half of them will be "starting their stories" with a bang, in the middle of some action scene or something. Then go look at some book/chapter openings of selling authors, Sanderson, Nora Roberts, or whoever, and you'll see the difference.

But aspiring writing experts don't want to hear this because it's boring and doesn't validate all their deeply held beliefs about writing. So Sanderson gives them what they want instead.

[Anonymous No.19325597]

>>19325516
Yes, women tend to be chickens, socially speaking.

[Anonymous No.19325660]

>>19325593
Like here's an example from one of his books. It's the opening of chapter one. It's pretty much all setting. There are visuals (garish light), sounds (clapping, yelling), and sense of heat, (baked, beads of sweat). Maybe taste/smell since there is wine involved, although that's a bit of a stretch. (Although you will find a lot of professional authors starting books with scenes in which food & drink are involved so they can get all five senses in.) The main character is doing nothing. He's just standing there watching. There's the little hook at the beginning that he's going to kill a king, but that's it. He doesn't start moving for a few more paragraphs. And then we have some character opinions. One example:
>They looked as if they were dead
Maybe opinion is not the correct word, but it's not an objective description. It's how the passed-out people look to the POV character. The whole point is getting the reader inside the head of the POV character for the chapter (which may or may not be a major character for the rest of the book. Often it's a throwaway character who is just used for the opening)
And then right at the beginning he says "the clothes were foreign to him." The point is the character usually wears other clothes. He has some kind of history. It doesn't have to be some deep Freudian shit about his upbringing. It just needs to be enough that the character hasn't been "born on page one."

Again, none of this shit is rocket science. But if you go join your local writer's workshop, you'll see. At least half the people (and that's being fucking generous) will write these openings with a bunch of clever dialogue, and it's just two talking heads with no sense of setting whatsoever. You'll be pages in before you know where the characters are, if they are inside or outside, if it's day or night.

Inb4 this sample from Sanderson is bad. The point isn't whether Sanderson's writing is good or bad. The point is that it works. This is exactly the kind of opening that a book which sells will have. And it's the only thing aspiring writers should be studying and practicing. If they can't open a story properly, all the intricately designed magic systems in the world can't save them.

[Anonymous No.19325702]

>>19325660
>>19325593
>tfw my first page is action shit and then it changes locations and I did the whole setting thing
DID I DO WRONG?

[Anonymous No.19325736]

>>19325702
Starting in media res is a cheap gimmick which has the problem of presenting the reader with actions he doesn't care about because he still doesn't know the characters, so he doesn't care about anything they do or is done to them.

[Anonymous No.19325781]

>>19325736
But many movies do exactly that. They have a short unrelated scene in the beginning and then they introduce completely different characters for the rest of the movie.

[Anonymous No.19325798]

>>19325781
Oh I didn't know you were making a movie!

[Anonymous No.19325799]

>>19325781
Yeah, and you might have noticed those movie tend to be bland and mediocre. As is generally the case, if something needs to resort to gimmicks to create tension and meaning.

[Anonymous No.19325821]

>>19325702
>>19325781
Only way to do it good is to start in media res BUT POINTING OUT THAT THIS UNKNOWN CHARACTER HAS SOMETHING SPECIAL, so the reader should want to follow him even though he still doesn't know him at all.
Sanderson is shit, but in the opening here >>19325660 he makes it very clear that the character he's presenting is special, an anomaly. First by mentioning that he's about to kill a king, then by saying that usually his kind is harmless, but not this particular specimen.

If you make your character special, starting in media res can work, otherwise you just have the equivalent of a random car chase or a random shooting in action movies: scenes so boring and so clichè that they make me immediately lose interest.

[Anonymous No.19325867]

>>19325190
Well the Mormons sure know something about creative writing.

[Anonymous No.19325876]

>>19325781
>>19325798
>>19325799
>>19325821
You guys realize this is what Brandon is trying to do, right? He's trying to write anime/movies in book form. Unfortunately for him nobody wants to adapt an 800 page novel.

[Anonymous No.19325889]

>>19325702
Yes, but it sounds like an easy fix? Put in 400-500 pages of setting first.
Here's the other thing to try just as an exercise. Think of some books you've read that you think begin "with a bang" with some kind of action scene. Then go get the book and type in the first 500-1000 words or so, and see what's really going on. Almost always it will not be actual action. It will be setting, character, and buildup the the action that comes right after. OR, it will a character surrounded by action but the character is not really doing anything, and it's all setting, five senses, character opinions and so on.

Like for example, you could have a story that opens on a battelfield in the middle of a battle. You could even have the main POV character running. But immediately (like the first sentece) he ducks behind something for cover. Then it's all setting. The sights, the sounds of gunfire and shells exploding, the smell of smoke, shit like that. Internals sensations to put in inside the character's mind too. His heart's racing, he's sweating, he's scared etc. So in that case, it's starting in and "action scene," but you aren't starting with action. The action surrounding the character is setting, but the character himself isn't "doing" anything for the first 500-1000 words.

But seriously the best exercise any aspiring or beginning writer can do is to type in book openings and chapter opening from successful authors to see what they are doing. Even if your aspirations are to write literary fiction, I think this is an important exercise

[happiness !!a/OIDIldPy9 No.19325897]

>>19325190
He's economically successful, and a large part of education, even in humanities, is devoted to produce products that are easy to sell.

For a university, it's better to have someone like sanderson or king teach creative writing that an avant-garde author hailed by the critiques but with poor sales.

His books are still shit. But he is knowleadeable in creating books that sell. The overlap in this two is large.

[Anonymous No.19325939]

>>19325889
An example that just came to me is the opening of Jurassic Park. I think it's a book some people might say begins with a bang, because in the first chapter a man who has been fucked up by a raptor is brought into a doctor's office in Costa Rica. Maybe it's not "action" but its like a violent scene at the beginning of the book. Then it gets into the main story, and it's almost 50% into the book before more violence happens.

But the actual opening of the first chapter is slow. It's a character, in a setting, with a problem. The problem is not a big one, and it not the main problem of the story. It's just a minor dissatisfaction. And in the first couple of paragraphs, Crichton tells us exactly where we are, who we are with, and where that person comes from:

>The tropical rain fell in drenching sheets, hammering the corrugated roof of the clinic building, roaring down the metal gutters, splashing on the ground in a torrent. Roberta Carter sighed, and stared out the window. From the clinic, she could hardly see the beach or the ocean beyond, cloaked in low fog. This wasn’t what she had expected when she had come to the fishing village of Bahía Anasco, on the west coast of Costa Rica, to spend two months as a visiting physician. Bobbie Carter had expected sun and relaxation, after two grueling years of residency in emergency medicine at Michael Reese in Chicago.

>She had been in Bahía Anasco now for three weeks. And it had rained every day.

>Everything else was fine. She liked the isolation of Bahía Anasco, and the friendliness of its people. Costa Rica had one of the twenty best medical systems in the world, and even in this remote coastal village, the clinic was well maintained, amply supplied. Her paramedic, Manuel Aragón, was intelligent and well trained. Bobbie was able to practice a level of medicine equal to what she had practiced in Chicago.

>But the rain! The constant, unending rain!

>Across the examining room, Manuel cocked his head. “Listen,” he said.

>“Believe me, I hear it,” Bobbie said.

>“No. Listen.”

>And then she caught it, another sound blended with the rain, a deeper rumble that built and emerged until it was clear: the rhythmic thumping of a helicopter. She thought, They can’t be flying in weather like this.

Then the helicopter shows up, and they bring the wounded guy in. Again, it's not that this opening is good or bad. It works. It does what the opening of a story is supposed to do, which is draw the reader in and connects them to the mind of the POV character. Crichton's prose is workmanlike and dull, but it doesn't matter. He could probably have used more sensory information too. King or Koontz would have, but whatever. Jurassic Park did well, and it's not just because it's a neat idea for a story. Crichton knew how to write novels people would read.

[Anonymous No.19325958]

>>19325939
Interedasting, anon. Tell us more. Give us more examples.

[Anonymous No.19325968]

>>19325190
I watched some of his lectures. His books are YA shit, obviously, and the lectures are retarded in terms of actual literary merit. If you want to be a novelist, it's like wanting to be a top tier Michelin cook. And this guy is good at making chickens at McDonald's. You shouldn't learn from him. You shouldn't even watch him do hamburgers. Go learn from other Michelin cooks.

[Anonymous No.19325976]

>>19325968
Yeah, I only read the first of the Mistborn series because everyone was giving it raving reviews, and I was flabbergasted at how bad it was. It was a struggle to finish it, despite the simplicity of the language.

[Anonymous No.19325981]

>>19325876
>nobody wants to adapt an 800 page novel
Anon...
not to mention the upcoming wheel of time series...

[Anonymous No.19325996]

>>19325867
lol (please rescue me from Utah)

[Anonymous No.19326006]

>>19325996
Stay in your confinement state, shitposter.

[Anonymous No.19326033]

>>19325351
Each successful writer finds their own method, and they aren't going to just tell every single person they meet the exact formula for reproducing it. Two reasons for this: it dilutes the value of their brand and hinders aspiring writers (look how much damage Stephen King has done with On Writing, just trying to give a few helpful pointers). You will never find a master of anything who will teach amateurs the secrets of their trade. It's not just gatekeeping or selfishness, it's common sense. It would be like asking a karate master to teach you his deadliest technique on your first lesson, the fact that you believe such a thing exists and expect to learn it immediately indicates a level of stupidity and impulsiveness unbecoming of a genuine karate student.

These "Master Class" style youtube series and lectures etc. etc. don't teach people how to write. Only a gullible moron would expect the "secrets of anything" to exist, for the aforementioned reasons. These lecture series simply repeat comforting lies about writing: you can achieve character depth by filling out endless surveys about their preferences, pantsing and plotting can both be valid methods of writing, the curtains were blue, etc. etc. etc. Composing one of these lecture sets is a different skill entirely than writing, giving and taking these classes has nothing to do with writing, nobody is trying to teach how to write through them, they're trying to pad their bank accounts.

[Anonymous No.19326101]

>>19325491
>>19325190
>>19325593
>>19325660
fuck, thanks for the post, i don't give a fuck about being published or anything but iv been working on writing and brandon sanderson was recommended to me via shadversity (who's a cool youtuber but shit writer apparently), despite my setting not at all being setting focus. i remember a part in his lecture where he highlights that exact opener you posted, and i remember thinking as shad was giving it as an example, that it was pretty boring and stereotypical, although i didn't realize how important an opener was since i give a book a few pages before giving up on it.

what lectures should i be listening to? something that's in-between YA and University tier since that's where my vocabulary and writing works best with

[Anonymous No.19326107]

>>19325996
At least they're sort of nice.

[Anonymous No.19326123]

>>19326033
>look how much damage Stephen King has done with On Writing, just trying to give a few helpful pointers
???

[Anonymous No.19326130]

>>19326101
Sanderson is the McDonalds of fantasy.

[Anonymous No.19326170]

>>19325958
Honestly, you should try it for yourself. Grab some books off your shelf and see how they start. Obviously not every single story will begin this way. For example a lot of first person novels will start with a "voice opening" where the character is just talking about themself or something. But I would say those are advanced techniques, or at least not beginner. The simplest, most basic opening would be a setting opening. And even if the book doesn't start that way, it works for chapter openings and scene openings too.

Do this. Find a book you like (that is at least reasonably widely popular) that has a setting opening. Type in the opening, the first 500-1000 words. And then analyze it:
>What is the setting?
>Who is the POV character?
>What is the problem?
(the problem may be a bit vague, that's fine)
>How many senses are evoked? Which?
>What opinions does the character have about the setting?
>What do we know know about the character's past?
(this doesn't have to be anything particularly deep)
>What is "happening" in the opening? What is the action?
Usually you'll find there isn't much.

If you want a good writing exercise, try this. Pick a random setting and a random character and write a 500-1000 word opening based around that. You can use some random generators online or just make some shit up. And for the character, you shouldn't spend a fuckload of time working out his details and shit. Just something like this:
>A young surgeon in an aquarium
>An elderly accountant on a mountaintop at sunrise
>A prostitute in a junkyard
Shit like that. You can figure out the rest of the details as you write. Think on the page. Don't worry about making it good, it's just practice. Just try to write 500-1000 words of a character in a setting, all five senses, opinions of the things sensed, a bit of character history which explains those opinions a bit.

[Anonymous No.19326179]

>>19325660
This right here has been more helpful info than any of the workshops I've seen from him. And that's not to undermine Samderson's work (not a big fan of what I've read from him but I can appreciate him giving tips to the community), it's just that, like you said, instead of delving into the practical side of things he goes into the other fluff of fantasy, i.e. world building and concepts. I'll definitely keep this in mind writing, this shit hadn't crossed my mind

[Anonymous No.19326201]

>>19325958
Not that anon, but I spend a lot of time doing crits in /wg/, and I almost always look at the opening to decide whether or not its worth the effort. What a good opening should do is provoke curiosity without analysis, and this is typically done through contrast. Either subject matter, perception, or depiction.

Once you understand this, you'll see it everywhere. Jurassic Park challenges your expectations: this is a novel about dinosaurs, why are we at this clinic? Oh, because things are already going downhill before the park has opened. The opening line of the Hobbit ("In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit") provokes the reader to wonder, what is a hobbit? And then later, why is this hairy ground-dwelling creature so prissy and uptight?

But again, you don't consciously ask yourself these questions, you just keep reading. Curiosity without analysis.

As the other anon pointed out, too many beginners try to find gimmicks, like shortcuts to curiosity. Start with action or dialogue, that'll throw them for a loop. Why is this guy running through a battlefield? Who are these people talking? The answers to these questions present themselves immediately: because there's a battle going on and he wants to stay alive, and two people that I have no reason to care about.

[Anonymous No.19326210]

>>19326170
>opinions of the things sensed
I feel like this is the crucial part. Simply describing the setting like a machine isn't enough, you need to tell the reader what the POV character thinks of it to give him or her a personality, and those opinions need to be original and odd, not banal stuff like "The wall was moldy and therefore unpleasant". Anyone can think that. Your character needs to be weird to be interesting.

[Anonymous No.19326249]

>>19326123
On Writing is mostly a fairy tale. Stephen King wants to a be writer who entertains people without all the frou-frou, goes to university to learn how, thinks he'll never achieve his dreams because the people at college don't understand him, falls into the pit of despair and throws away his manuscript, and then one day receives a call from his fairy god-agent who informs him of tremendous success and fortune. And the reader is allowed to feel like they, too, are on the verge of fantastic success. "Well, hey, I also hate all that AP English bullshit about symbolism and theme and all that, and all the feedback I get is negative, too. Perhaps I am misunderstood as well..."

The actual advice given is cheap and hollow, and the average reader would be better served by just picking up a copy of Strunk and White. King does make a few good points, you should entertain your reader, because you're asking for a huge time commitment and you need to be giving something in return. But mostly it's just folksy nonsense about "bringing your whole toolbox" as if it were possible to forget some aspect of writing when reviewing your work.

[Anonymous No.19326259]

let's go brandon

[Anonymous No.19326270]

>>19326249
On review, it does sound like the King life narrative was designed to appeal to mainstream audience. No regard for "serious literature", considered automatically boring and pretentious, strong focus on cool stories, the idea that all you need to immediately make it is a short manuscript sent to your agent. I don't know how much to believe about it.

[Anonymous No.19326275]

>>19326170
Thanks man. You've been a real man among men. A real bro among cousins.

[Anonymous No.19326279]

>>19325781
movies tell everything visually, so all of that setting and characterization is done without a single word retard

are you making a fucking picturebook?

[Anonymous No.19326281]

>>19326279
>are you making a fucking picturebook?
Possibly? No one on /lit/ writes so how should he know?

[Anonymous No.19326290]

>>19326279
Most movies rely on heavy exposition through dialogue.

[Anonymous No.19326291]

>>19325448
Sanderson is teaching kids Aristotelean metaphysics

[Anonymous No.19326329]

>>19326291
Source?

[Anonymous No.19326358]

>>19326290
Bad movies do.

[Anonymous No.19326376]

>>19325981
I've heard a lot of people say that Martin's books are written like TV shows to be fair, and I kinda agree

[Anonymous No.19326381]

>>19326291
Hmmm nice

[Anonymous No.19326414]

People who write fantasy have such mechanical rules for writing. I really don't get it.

[Anonymous No.19326432]

>>19325781
Like for a movie example, take Jaws. It's a successful movie. Spielberg is a successful director. I don't care if it's not "cinemah" or whatever. It works, and a lot of other movies don't work.

So someone might say the movie starts with a "bang" because the first scene is a girl getting eaten by a shark. But the actual opening is like this
>underwater shark pov of seeweed with the credits over top
>slow panning shot of a party/get-together on a beach
It's a movie, so it's mostly visual/audio, but there are also a lot of other sensory cues. There's a fire, the young people are wearing jackets and some have blankets. Heat and cold. They're smoking pot and cigarettes and drinking beer. Taste and smell.
>Guy and girl eyefuck a bit
>He goes over to flirt with her, she takes off running, playing hard to get, he chases after her.
So like these first few minutes are kind of "slow." It's not really starting with a bang though.

Now, think if this were a book. (I know Jaws is a book, but I haven't read it, so I don't know how it actually starts). Anyway, if this were a book, you'd have a bunch of setting first. The POV character would probably have to be the girl, because the guy passes out and that's why he doesn't hear her getting eaten. So you'd write some shit about the girl. Why did she come to the party? Who does she know there? Why is she sitting off to the side by herself? Why is she eyefucking that particular guy? Has she had a crush on him for a while, or did he just catch her eye tonight?

Like if Stephen King were writing that scene, it would be several pages before the girl even got up and started running. And several more before she get ripped to pieces by the shark.

I think one issue is this-- it takes a lot longer to write something than it does to read it. A reader will go through those first couple of pages pretty quick, and as long as you are writing from the senses and getting inside the pov character's head, they'll keep reading. But when you're writing it, it will take you hours, maybe a full day, and you're sitting there thinking, fuck, fuck, this is boring, it's too slow, readers will be bored, I need to speed the story up. I would say the biggest key to Stephen King's success is that he doesn't think that way. Maybe his brain is just wired like that, or maybe he trained himself, I don't know. But he's not scared to take his sweet fucking time with setting the scene and just kind of hanging out in the pov character's mind for a while before the action starts. That's probably true for Sanderson too, though probably to a lesser extent.

[Anonymous No.19326467]

>>19326432
I imagine the exuberant amount of cocaine he snorted helped his ability to keep wriitng.

[Anonymous No.19326497]

>>19326432
>The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail. The mouth was open just enough to permit a rush of water over the gills. There was little other motion: an occasional correction of the apparently aimless course by the slight raising or lowering of a pectoral fin—as a bird changes direction by dipping one wing and lifting the other. The eyes were sightless in the black, and the other senses transmitted nothing extraordinary to the small, primitive brain. The fish might have been asleep, save for the movement dictated by countless millions of years of instinctive continuity: lacking the flotation bladder common to other fish and the fluttering flaps to push oxygen-bearing water through its gills, it survived only by moving. Once stopped, it would sink to the bottom and die of anoxia.

>The land seemed almost as dark as the water, for there was no moon. All that separated sea from shore was a long, straight stretch of beach—so white that it shone. From a house behind the grass-splotched dunes, lights cast yellow glimmers on the sand.

>The front door to the house opened, and a man and a woman stepped out onto the wooden porch. They stood for a moment staring at the sea, embraced quickly, and scampered down the few steps onto the sand. The man was drunk, and he stumbled on the bottom step. The woman laughed and took his hand, and together they ran to the beach.

I think this definitely reiterates the ideas you described about the Jurassic Park opener. So bearing in the mind that the reader almost certainly knows "This is a book about a giant shark" or "This is a book about dinosaurs in modern times" the intro is jarring: we get the shark's perspective instead of the human's. As you say, it engages the senses and it manages to make us distinctly uncomfortable by showing us the perspective of a creature who *is* comfortable in a dark sea, unlike a person.

[Anonymous No.19326500]

>>19326467
Lol true. Maybe the coke made him write so fast he was writing at the same speed a person reads.

[Anonymous No.19326505]

who? he's fat so i will disregard this post

[Anonymous No.19326637]

>>19326432
>he's not scared to take his sweet fucking time with setting the scene and just kind of hanging out in the pov character's mind for a while before the action starts.
This is something I've always thought about his writing pretty much in those exact terms and it makes my cock so hard that a smart anon here agrees. King is, above all, CONFIDENT in his writing. He's not afraid of losing the reader's attention. In some books (like Desperation, I think) he takes his sweet fucking time describing an entire neighborhood and what people are doing and the weather and the songs they're listening to, and even information about those songs. He describes every little detail in his typical style and you can tell that he's having a brilliant time doing it, so it's not boring at all despite being all setting. It's a full 3-4 pages before shit starts to go down, and it does a GREAT job of setting the scene and getting you interested.

Amateur writers' biggest issue is probably that they're TERRIFIED of boring the reader. The result is that they jump straight into the action -- action that ends up feeling meaningless and boring because the stage has not been set, the characters have not been properly introduced, so you don't care what happens and to whom.

Another lethal problem of inexperienced writers is that they're terrified of being MOCKED, or just misunderstood. The result is that they overexplain everything (depriving the reader of the pleasure of putting the pieces together slowly, which is one of the main pleasures of reading), and they refrain from writing with boldness and abandon, choosing the safe option instead of the creative one whenever they have an idea that feels "too much".
The book obviously ends up being bland, forgettable trash.

(I noticed these problems in a book his son Owen has written, and couldn't go past the first few pages. I guess having Stephen King's shoes to fill can be intimidating.)

[Anonymous No.19326644]

>>19326467
>>19326500
Nigger didn't even remember writing Cujo. Like, not at all. Not a single word. He banged in out in like 50 days and then forgot about it.

[Anonymous No.19326716]

>>19325433
I can tell you don't understand popular books.
You'll never understand them if you assume from the start they is awful. T

[Anonymous No.19326746]

>>19326716
>they is awful

[Anonymous No.19326750]

>>19326716
Not him but popular books DO rely on power fantasies. Are you kidding me?

[Anonymous No.19326761]

>>19326644
I think that was The Running Man in 10 days.

[Anonymous No.19326765]

>>19326637
>Amateur writers' biggest issue is probably that they're TERRIFIED of boring the reader
Yeah I think so, and I think it's one of the reasons typing in the work of successful authors is a good exercise. I just recently did this for a short chapter in a Preston & Child book. The chapter felt like such a barn burner when I was reading it. I marked it for later and went back to type it in to get a feeling for the pacing. I was surprised by how long it took before stuff actually started happening (and this was a chapter in the middle of the book). If I had been writing it, I definitely would have jumped the gun and gotten into the action too quickly, which would have made the scene not work at all.

>>19326644
based

[Anonymous No.19326783]

>>19326761
No, he remembers writing that (although he did say he wrote it in like 3 days in a motel room, but he was probably exaggerating). But he does not remember Cujo at all. He said it was like reading a book written by someone else.

[Anonymous No.19326784]

>>19326497
lol so the book actually starts with the shark? That's kind of cool. It's funny because the whole thing with the movie is how we don't get to see the shark for over half the movie or something. Although I guess we're not "seeing" the shark here either. Still, kind of interesting. And I mean, this is a great opening. I already know what's going to happen, but I still want to keep reading to find out what happens. Lol maybe I'll read Jaws now.

[Anonymous No.19326803]

>>19326784
No, anon, you should read some serious literature. How about a banging Rooney novel?

Maybe some smart anon can explain why the fuck her stuff sells so much.

[Anonymous No.19326899]

>>19326803
wtf is this?

[Anonymous No.19327112]

>>19325495
How the fuck does love challenge the axiom of selfishness? Love is just another type of utility that people apply cost/benefit to. Someone who loves their family is seeing to their need to have that interaction.

[Anonymous No.19327123]

>>19326899
/lit/ wrote a book. It was garbage.

[Anonymous No.19327167]

>>19326803
Rooney is easy to understand and it emotes well by crafting scenes that are at once generalised and specified, making it easy for normies to insert themselves into the scene.

It's garbage but it's entertaining, and that's what people are reading it for.

[Anonymous No.19327184]

>>19325511
He's a big guy
(Checked)

[Anonymous No.19327203]

>>19327123
/lit/ wrote it to be garbage on purpose though. Rooney tries to be le great intellectual and le serious writer.

[Anonymous No.19327333]

>>19325495
to be fair, that IS a vapid thing to say

[Anonymous No.19327355]

>>19327333
Shut up Bobbi.

[Anonymous No.19327736]

>>19326899
It's the voice of her generation, mrs. Sally Rooney. The young marxist prodigy.

[Anonymous No.19327843]

>>19326803
>Maybe some smart anon can explain why the fuck her stuff sells so much.
It may sell, but nobody actually reads this shit. I refuse to believe it. They just want it on their bookshelf for faggot points.

[Anonymous No.19327941]

>>19326101
>what lectures should i be listening to
Dean Wesley Smith is good. He's boomer as fuck, and honestly I think his books suck, but his writing advice is solid.

[Anonymous No.19328117]

>>19325351
The main secret is to hold the attention of the reader till the end of the book. For that purpose pop authors
1) start the book with an attention grabbing, curiousity grabbing sentence (The first sentence here
>>19325660
already sets the plot in motion)
2) end chapters with cliffhangers or with a tension rising, ominous paragraph or phrase (Take a King book and see how almost every chapter ends)
3) set a time limit within the narrative to keep the tension high (Read King's Dreamcatcher with a critical eye to the question of time. Read every King's book, in fact, to see how the problem of time is handled, especially toward the climax. Even a slowburner like Insomnia gets a time limit by the end.)
4) Make the stakes against the protagonists really high to make the reader wonder how will the heroes get out of their predicament (Every King book I read gave that feeling of weak nobodies being overwhelmed by the titanic forces and surviving by their skin of the teeth)
5) Use the obvious titillating elements of violence and sex
A complimentary strategy is by lulling the reader into their narrative by creating vivid scenes, like this anon>>19325660 said.
If you read King, you'll see he goes out of the way to create a verisimilitude of American life (the rural, urban setting, the long winded biographies of, sometimes, secondary characters) and drops the monsters into it or disturbs in other ways (The Cell, The Stand).
He entrances you, and then spooks you.
But I think that attention grabbing is the really secret ingredient.
Take the Institute, for example. The characters are stereotypical (the big bad woman sounds no better than Chrysalis from My Little Pony when she finally gets the bullet); the big bad government corporation is just bad and their whole premise falls apart upon close examination (let's use this highly costly and economically inefficient method of extracting ESP powers from these rare kids - that ends up in their quick death and with their potential used up faster than a laptop battery - that we developed in the 1960s and let's not find anything better till the end of 2019. Plus, there's a contradiction in the novel when it's implied that a precog group is given ultra comfy setting because it makes them work better but the kids with other ESP talents must pass through torture because that's the the thing that makes their abilities sharper); and the epilogue, when the main hero explain something about probability, feature a lightly, very lightly, edited Wikipedia quote.
Yet, I still read it till the end.
Why?
I wanted to know what will happen next.

[Anonymous No.19328171]

>>19326716
But popular books is genuinely awful. They is almost universally terrible.

[Anonymous No.19328617]

>>19325492
No. Mormonism.

[Anonymous No.19328623]

>>19325511
Mandatory apparel in Mormon schools.

[Anonymous No.19328680]

His face reminded me of a small game I did with the boys back in our teenage years.
We'd play with each other asking the same question
>hey how many chromosomes do you have?
We'd ask it random persons on the street, I remember a kid wanted to be smart and replied
>more than you
We couldn't stop laughing. Great times.

[Anonymous No.19329287]

>>19325433
>>The easiest example of this is the female lit. market. It's littered with trash but chicks seem to eat it up because it has all the female power fantasy tropes they like: nothing special girl being desired by powerful males who can't contain their desire etc.
it's the same for tv shows, especially the soap operas. 99% of shows are made fro women, because tv was made for them

[Anonymous No.19329370]

>>19325821
>If you make your character special, starting in media res can work, otherwise you just have the equivalent of a random car chase or a random shooting in action movies: scenes so boring and so clichè that they make me immediately lose interest.

On the other hand, sometimes those scenes are so bizarre and off the wall, they're the only part of the movie worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rurhk1hadp8

[Anonymous No.19329973]

>>19328171
Dey don't think it be like dis but it be because wypipo stole all the black kings writings rise up black kings we were literates and shit.

[Anonymous No.19329981]

>>19329370
But that scene DID have a special character introduced. Bane is clearly shown as an odd fellow, both in looks and in philosophy, and you want to know what he's gonna do next.

Plus, that scene is very different from a random car chase or a random shooting. It's an unusual kind of action, so it has the element of novelty. But the biggest perk of that scene is that before the action starts, you get to meet this odd Bane guy and realize he's weird and interesting.

[Anonymous No.19330005]

>>19329981
Yeah, the /tv/ memes mocking that scene are incredibly forced. It's a pretty good hook scene that sets up Bane well.

[Anonymous No.19330029]

>>19330005
>Why does he use the hook?

[Anonymous No.19330170]

>>19330005
I'd say it's the only good scene in that movie. It's all downhill from there.

[Anonymous No.19330519]

>>19330005
Wrong

[Anonymous No.19330597]

>>19325190
>>gamma boy
>>professor

yup, checks out

>>19325351
gamma boys love to insert themselves in their stories, they are of course, the secret king

other gamma boys recognise it and go mental (one of us, one of us)

also make sure there's a super hot redhead in there who for no reason wants to fuck you

[Anonymous No.19330747]

>>19328117
sweet, i'm new to writing and my noval already covers all these

except i fucked up on cliff hangers, i always overshoot those and after rewriting it i actually like this way better, thanks anon

[Anonymous No.19330919]

>>19325736
This is, of course, bullshit. Many successful contemporary books begin in medias res (I recently read Barron's Bulldozer, for one, and this in the notoriously slow horror genre).

>>19325702
No. It all depends on the quality of your writing. Just keep the action short if it's going to take place before you give me a character to care about.

[Anonymous No.19331063]

>>19330919
>Many successful contemporary books begin in medias res
And they are shit. I assume we're not trying to write shit.

[Anonymous No.19331123]

>>19330919
>Barron's Bulldozer
Before calling observations "bullshit" you should at least try to understand them, shit for brains.
Here's the opening of Bulldozer:

>Then he bites off my shooting hand.
>Christ on a pony, here's a new dimension of pain.
>The universe flares white. A storm of dandelion seeds, a cyclone of fire. That's the Coliseum on its feet, a full-blown German orchestra, a cannon blast inside my skull, the top of my skull coming off.
>I better suck it up or I'm done for.
>I'm a Pinkerton man. That means something. I've got the gun, a cold blue Colt, and a card with my name engraved beneath the unblinking eye. I'm a dead shot, a deadeye Dick. I was on the mark in Baltimore when assassins went for Honest Abe. I skinned my iron and plugged them varmints. Abe should've treated me to the theater. Might still be here. Might be in a rocker scribbling how the South was won.

The "action" is literally SEVEN WORDS. At the second sentence, we're already inside the main character's head, already hearing his opinions and getting aquainted with his personality.

We're not talking about this kind of stuff when we say that beginning in media res is bad, we're talking about entire pages filled with only actions -- actions that tries to be cool but that we don't give a shit about because we still don't know the guy who performs them. We're talking about the classic trope of the story that begins with a crying woman running away from something in the rain, and expects us to find it a cool and gripping start.

[Anonymous No.19331887]

>>19331123
Then you are using the term incorrectly. In medias res doesn't "action" in that sense; it's literally "in the middle of things". It's the sort of narrative that begins halfway through the plot then loops back (often in the form of an intradiegetic narrator) to tell us what came before.
What you mean is that lots of random action with no emotional stakes for the reader are to be avoided, which is always true, independently of where in the plot it happens. Great advice, in any case.

[Anonymous No.19333258]

>>19326803
I'm confused. Is the author really trying to suggest this "Bobbi" is anything besides a pompous buffoon?

[Anonymous No.19333416]

>>19326432
Damn, every once in a while /lit/ produces a gem and this is definitely one.

Do you have any tips on characterization once you've passed the opening hurdle?

[Anonymous No.19333464]

>>19326376
what does that mean?

[Anonymous No.19333566]

>>19325976
1st one was fun but it he rest were crap. Seems to happen a lot with these Tolkien ripoffs.

[Anonymous No.19334816]

Why is Sando so successful?

[Anonymous No.19335144]

>>19325582
I don't get Greg. He turned down tenure and it's not really clear as to why.

[Anonymous No.19335417]

Is somebody screencapping all this stuff?
This is really useful stuff that should be posted more often, especially in the /wg/ thread.

[Anonymous No.19335480]

>>19335417
Openings anon really did a stellar job

[Anonymous No.19336749]

>>19326414
well aren't a bulk of fantasy/scifi writers and readers STEMfags? They're gonna have a different outlook on writing as a result. The qualities for a good publication in a journal are not the same as the qualities for a novel.

[Anonymous No.19336851]

>>19326376
He was a TV writer for ages. Worked on that urbantasy Beauty and the Beast show with Ron Perlman, set in the NYC sewers.

[Anonymous No.19336872]

>>19328171
kek