Here is some more advice from Brandon Sanderson’s English 318 class at BYU…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
One of the first things we talked about in class this semester was how to come up with good ideas for a story.\u00a0 I think that this part of the class was really excellent, especially coming from Brandon and not some English professor who’s never written or published a novel.\u00a0 There is a big difference between analyzing and tearing apart a novel and actually sitting down and writing one, and I’d rather take a creative writing class from those who have direct experience with creative writing.<\/p>\n
Brandon started off by saying that one idea does not make a book.\u00a0 Neither do two.\u00a0 If you can take about six ideas–really awesome, jawdropping, heart-stopping ideas–and combine them into one place, then you’ve got yourself a story with some novel potential.<\/p>\n
One really interesting thing he said was that ideas in themselves are cheap.\u00a0 Everybody in SF\/F has some really cool idea or two, and ideas are constantly floating across the desks of publishers.\u00a0 What they’re looking for is not necessarily a good idea so much as the skill to take an idea and make a really fine book out of it.<\/p>\n
Some people are afraid that if they share their story with publishers, those publishers will steal the idea and get someone else to write it.\u00a0 Brandon debunked this and said that we shouldn’t worry about it–it’s monetarily cheaper for the publishers to get you to write your own story (or reject you) than to hire someone else to do it.<\/p>\n
A book is like a chemical reaction–good books are born when ideas mix together.<\/p>\n
Brandon divided story ideas into three basic categories: setting, plot, and character.\u00a0 He advised brainstorming ideas before you write, and looking for something like a one sentence plot summary.<\/p>\n
The plot ideas have almost all been done somewhere before and you probably aren’t going to come up with something terribly original here.\u00a0 That’s ok, though.\u00a0 One really cool thing he said was that in SF you can take pretty much anything that’s happened in history–and tag “IN SPACE!” on the end.\u00a0 Hannibal crosses the Alps with an army of elephants…IN SPACE! (of course, the “elephants” are some kind of superweapon, and the “alps” is some kind of nebula or dust cloud, but you get the idea).\u00a0 Cool!<\/p>\n
Setting, though, is the place where things get original–especially in SF\/F.\u00a0 Brandon suggested combining a couple of ideas from here.\u00a0 Things to look out for with regards to setting include (but are by no means limited to):<\/p>\n
Also, you need to come up with some kind of unique magic system.\u00a0 The way to do this is to think of some kind of unique cost or unique reception.<\/p>\n
Brandon said that the most important ideas, however, have to do with the characters.\u00a0 He suggested thinking up these ideas last so that they can intertwine with all the previous ideas.<\/p>\n
“Characters are about conflict.” That is a direct quote.\u00a0 The protagonist must be in conflict, and the protagonist must also be proactive in that conflict.\u00a0 It’s also a good idea to write characters that come into conflict with the setting itself–such as Vin in Mistborn<\/em>, how she struggled to learn the magic system, or struggled to rise above her lowly position as a runaway skaa.<\/p>\n Brandon also said that as a beginning writer, you shouldn’t write stories with more than two viewpoint characters.\u00a0 This…is where I’m going to have to do something different.\u00a0 But he said not to do it.<\/p>\n It’s important, also, that the villain be interesting and have different motivations.\u00a0 Two motivations to avoid are: “I want to destroy the world because I’m evil,” and “I want to destroy the world because I’m insane.” (Kefka, the most awesome RPG villain, doesn’t quite make the cut here, but RPGs are different–you can get away with more there).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here is some more advice from Brandon Sanderson’s English 318 class at BYU…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-2m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}