Tips on World Building With Examples From Brent Weeks and His Novel ‘The Way of Shadows’

In this post we’ll talk about what Brent Weeks does when world building and we’ll see if we can dig up a few examples from his books to go with his creation process.

For me, the world that I enter into when I pick up a fantasy novel is the single most important ingredient that decides if I like the book or not.  That said, a lot of us find that building an epic world is a difficult thing to do.  How do we serve up the details that create the world that people want to visit over and over again? Let’s see if we can shed a little light on that through the writing of Brent Weeks.

Introduce the World Early

Unlike so many other genres that take place in a world that is very familiar to us, our own world, fantasy (and science fiction) often require huge amounts of additional information (world building) to allow the reader to step into the story that you are creating.  While most fantasy novels take place in a Renaissance like era with knights and castles, the fantasy author almost always changes parts of Renaissance history to suit his fictional world and will quite often make large sweeping changes.  Cluing us into the culture, period or place in our history (very often the Renaissance era) that your world is modeled after is the first step to good world building.  But, in addition to changes in various elements of Renaissance history, the author must usually add to it as well and the additions are what make or break each fantasy world.  First make your world like some period in our world and then make the additions that turn that setting into your own unique and hugely awesome world.

Here’s an example of basic world building that comes from the first page, first paragraph of Weeks’ The Way of Shadows revealing to the reader that this story does indeed take place in the good old castles and knights (Renaissance) era by describing something as simple as a tavern.

“Most taverns in the city had dirt floors, but this part of the Warrens had been built over marshland…so the tavern had been raised a few inches on stilts and floored with stout bamboo poles.” — The Way of Shadows

Even though there are taverns in the world around us, if the reader is at all familiar with the castles and knights setting the ‘dirt floors’ and ‘Warrens’ are words that clue us into the setting without a large amount of exposition.  True, the setting isn’t definite at this point, but most readers are already assuming castles and knights because of the few clues leading to that conclusion, but especially because there are no other details that set us in a exotic location.  This was the first paragraph and already, as a reader, I have a good idea of the world I’m in.  The bulk of world building must be done in the first chapter and to keep readers interested it must be done very well.

Brent, in a quote from his own site, said about world building,

“Obviously you want to seed some of the world building earlier so it can pay off later, and you want to fill in enough of the details about the world so it doesn’t seem like your characters are wandering through a fog, disembodied, talking and fighting with each other, but the world should be introduced as it’s important.” — The Way of Shadows

Brent then goes on, in the first chapter of Way of Shadows, to build his world for us, as well as ‘seed’ details to pay off later.  He uses ‘coppers’ as part of the money system to link his world in the mind’s of his readers with both Dungeons & Dragons as well as the many other fantasy novels that use coppers.  Other words like ‘assassin’ and ‘sword’ further cement us in the castles and knights world that we are so familiar with.  But every writer must then take the standard c&k (castles and knights) world and make it his own.  And these ADDITIONS are the most difficult part of world building.  How many details, how often and of what nature?

Let’s take a look at an example of Brent adding to the standard castles and knights setting.

“If he were braver, he would have looted the bodies in the tavern, but Azoth couldn’t believe Durzo Blint was dead.  Maybe he was a demon, like the other guild rats said.” — The Way of Shadows

Let’s go over just what Brent added above to begin making this world his own.  Durzo Blint  just killed, in record time mind you, a whole slew of guys that wanted to kill him.  Sure, we need that kind of action in this kind of book, but where Weeks demonstrates his masterful and subtle skill in world building is in the second sentence from the quote.  Let’s dissect the quote a little bit.

By having our young hero question if Blint, a famous assassin in this world, is a demon Weeks does a slew of things at once.  First, it shows the youth, inexperience, naivete and thought process of our boy hero.  Secondly it firmly alludes to the idea that there are actually demons in this world, furthering the world building by possibly adding real demons.  And then, finally, it creates a very powerful aura of danger and supernatural abilities to the Blint character.  All of that in five words.  Kind of impressive.

The examples go on and on.  Create the basic world and then make it yours with selective details added sparsely as needed just as Brent has done in his works.  And though Weeks’ worlds aren’t talked about often, they are done with a quiet expertise that all of us should certainly aspire to.  Is his the only way to build a very interesting and layered world?  Of course not.  But, his is done very, very well and should be taken note of by any aspiring writer.

-d

“Writers Write!”: A Sneak Peek of the First Lecture

Hey guys, I’m slightly ahead of schedule but want to hold the start date firm for June 3 like I originally said (Some of the more observant will notice I changed it from June 1st to the 3rd. This is so we can begin on a Monday.). That said though, I thought it would be neat though to give some of you a sneak peek at the first lecture of the class, which I’ve taken the liberty of transcribing below (and liberally edited for print readiness). Enjoy! – Scott

Writers Write – The First Lecture

Brandon: For this class, I want you to begin writing a new story… The ideal thing for you to do would probably to try to write a 30k word novella. Novellas work like a novel, they exercise lots of the same muscles, and then you can actually finish something. I released a 30k word novella last year, The Emperors Soul, which is about the length you are shooting for in this class. If you want, you can instead start a new novel intended to be longer than 30k words with the plan being that you would keep going on after the class to finish it, forcing you to keep writing… hopefully… theoretically… perhaps.

But I do want you to start something new rather than something you’ve been working on. One of the reasons for this is that there are lots of writers who want to become pros but who get stuck in the rut of working on the same concept over and over and over again. I don’t want to let you keep doing that to yourself, to keep working on that story you’ve workshopped in three different writing classes so far. It’s not about me arbitrarily wanting you to do new work for this class. Its about me wanting to help you break out of that… There are always a few who have been working on this project, it’s like this dream project they’ve had going for years and years and years, and its like, “No, lets put this aside.”

A couple of reasons for that. First I want you to be experimenting in this class with the things I’m talking about, like discovery writing and architect writing, and I don’t want you to be too emotionally tied to the story that you’re working on. If you work on something new you will begin to be more free to do this. Also, it will teach you that writers write. Writers don’t have one story that they’re going tell. Most of the time, they have a skill in writing that lets them tell a lot of different stories.

Ideas are cheap. Alright? Ideas are cheap. You may have an idea that you think is just awesome and perhaps it is. But a good writer can take terrible ideas and write a fantastic story out of them and a bad writer can take the best ideas in the world and go nowhere with them. A great example of this is Jim Butcher, very nice fellow. He writes some urban fantasy books, which are quite well written and some epic fantasies which I like even more. He was on a forum once arguing with someone about this topic and although Jim is a writer, I assume the person he was arguing with was not. Well, maybe a pretend writer but not really a writer, because this person was saying “No, no, the ones who make it are the ones who have the great ideas. These are the ones who go far.” And Jim argued “No, the people who make it are the people who have the skills of a writer which they’ve trained themselves in.” So, they got into this big argument and at the end of it Jim said, “Alright, you give me your worst ideas and I’m going to write a book about them and it’s going to be awesome.” And so the person said “Okay, I want you to write a book combining the lost Roman legion and Pokemon.” (Laughter). Yea, this is true, I got Jim to confirm it to me – a story combining the lost Roman legion and Pokemon. Based off this challenge, Jim then wrote this epic fantasy series called Codex Alera which is about the lost Roman legion using these elemental based pets that they bond with… and stuff… its pretty awesome. And the series has 6 books, which are best sellers. And I’ve read them and they’re good. So this is what happens when lost Roman legion meets Pokemon was that. Alright? Ideas are cheap. The more you train yourself to write, the more ideas you’ll have, and soon you’ll have more ideas than you can write.

I’m going to prove to you that ideas are cheap, so let’s brainstorm ideas… and come up with ideas for six different books that are going to be cool. A really good story in my opinion mixes 3 things. First, it mixes in a good setting idea. Setting is why you’re in this class rather than in another creative writing class. We in science fiction and fantasy writing have much more of a focus on setting than other genres do, since we think of setting as a living breathing character and have all sort of science fiction and fantasy element you’d expect [like magic or technology). So to summarize, I don’t start a book until first I’ve got a couple of good ideas for a setting. Alright?

Next, you usually combine that with a good idea for a character, which is really an idea for a character conflict. Alright? A good character conflict. Then you mix that with the plot idea. Plot is generally the place where you’re going to be the least original. People talk about there being only a limited number of plots, and to an extent its true. I don’t want to downplay the art in all this and whatnot but there are certain forms you use to tell a story, certain plot arcs, that have been very successful and most stories are going to fall into these. You know them: the underdog success story, or the journey, the quest, the mystery, and these sort of things. If your plot can’t be original though, you can have an idea for interesting twist on a plot.

Once I’ve got a few ideas for each for these three story elements – plot, character, and setting – that begin combining in interesting ways, that’s when I’ll begin to write a story, this is what makes me want to write a story.

So, we’re going to try brainstorming ideas for plot, character, and setting today… First, let’s go ahead and brainstorm a couple of rich, interesting, setting concepts. Places where you haven’t seen a story take place, a magic system based on something interesting, or a world element that you haven’t seen. Something that pops into your head. What would be cool? Just throw them out at me.

To be continued June 3…

China Mieville Secret to Writing: Play Dungeons and Dragons, Think Incompossibility, Be a Marxist and Fight Bill Gates

China Mieville is one of the most celebrated authors of this era with countless awards and accolades racked up over the years.  The City & the City won the 2010 Arthur C. Clarke Award, 2010 Hugo Award, and 2010 World Fantasy Award, as well as being a Nebula Award nominee in the Best Novel category.  See his books here at amazon’s page about him and maybe read a few of the zillions of awesome reviews he has. He writes in a category aptly named ‘weird fiction’ and is perfectly fine with you and me saying he is a ‘fantasy author’ or a ‘fantasy and science fiction author’ rather than taking exception and demanding that his book be remanded to the ‘classics’ or ‘fiction’ categories of our local books store (see Slaughter House Five) rather than that section of shelves where demons, H.A.L.’s, satyrs, Krakens, worm holes and runaway gods reside.

In an interview with The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy, China reveals a bit about himself and his sometimes wild and exotic and sometimes insightful theories on life, fiction, science fiction and the world in general.

Dungeons and Dragons

Yes, our hero likes to throw the dice around.  I wonder if there is a list out there with the names of every science fiction and fantasy author that’s ever rolled the dice in the name of scoring a critical hit and ‘just grabbing hold of the rope as you slip over the edge of the cliff into the chasm. Wow, you were really lucky there, bro.’ in an epic game of Dungeons & Dragons.  I’d bet they are almost all on there.  And I bet a lot of us have as well.  I know I have.  If you were to visit my mom’s house (If you do, beware, she will totally ‘friend’ you on Facebook) and ask her she will bring out the folders filled with maps, legends, cities, adventures, characters (and anything else I could think of adding to my DM’d world of Dungeons & Dragons) that I created as a young man.  Apparently me and China feel the same way about half-elf magic users.

What’s been your best memory of D&D???

Incompossibility”

Incompossibility is a tentacled skull that resides ‘magically’ on China’s body and apparently gives him super writing powers.  I’m not sure how it works, you’ll have to visit the article and find out for yourself.  Needless to say the explanation was deeper than the puddle I usually like to splash around in and that it had a further explanation in yet another article that you’ll have to read to really get it.  (If you do get it, please take a few more minutes to explain it to me.)

Marxism

Yes, China is part of a little club that espouses some sort of Marxism.  Please don’t hold up the Soviet Union as an example of why said theory would not/could not/should not work.  He’s heard it before and might just punch you in the face with some John Scalzi kind of rage if you do.  (Didn’t know Scalzi was a rager?  Read about Scalzi’s hitman tendencies here.) I don’t care what kind of government you guys put into place so long as you agree to bring back Firefly.

Fighting Bill Gates

Honestly, who hasn’t wrestled around with some version of Windows and not felt like fighting Bill Gates?  However, in this case, it isn’t China Mieville who fought Bill Gates but the website China Mieville VS (they pit China vs. all manner of victims) that fought him.  Has China heard of this site?  He has. Does he approve?  Well, the site is still up…

And China looks like a pretty tough dude.

China vs Slip and Slides?

China vs Logan Nine Fingers?

China vs Kavothe?

Let’s hope he doesn’t start anything rough with Patrick Rothfuss for not liking his dragons.  I don’t think China actually has any dragons in his books, but I’m sure, being the dedicated Dungeons & Dragons player that he is, that he’s owned a dragon here and there.

Turns out that China is just another great writer that sounds mean as hell

;)

-d

Details on the June 1 class

Hey guys, there has been a general clamor for more details on the June writing class, so I’ve gone ahead and posted them on the sign up page, but will reprint them here for your enlightenment. Look forward to seeing this happen! And fyi, if you haven’t already shared news of the class with your friends and such, now would be the ideal time so they can get in on the ground floor!

  1. Every Monday, I’ll post that week’s lecture.
  2. Optionally, throughout the week I’ll post a couple “creative catalysts” you can respond to that consist of a flash fiction writing prompts focusing on a principle Brandon taught. They’ll be constrained to around 250 words and are supposed to only represent 15 minutes of internal-editor-free writing to get your creative writerly muscles warmed up.
  3. By each Thursday, you’ll be expected to post a 1000 word submission to the specialized forum I have set up. I almost have it done, but suffice it to say it will look somewhat similar to Quora or Stackoverflow if you’re familiar with those.
  4. By Monday (in time for the next lecture), you should have critiqued at least 4 other students submissions.
  5. By the end of the September (4 months), have have written 30,000 words, hopefully a complete novelette.

See you guys soon.

-Scott

Ursula K. Le Guin is at War With Harry Potter, Google and Hollywood

Ursula K. Le Guin is one of the great writers of science fiction and fantasy.  She has won five Locus, four Nebula, two Hugo, and one World Fantasy Award.  And her book The Dispossessed won the trinity — the Locus, Nebula and Hugo awards.  In ’97 she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.  She’s got some hardware, and she’s also got some fire.  Like Dominique Francon from The Fountainhead, Ursula isn’t afraid to cross anyone or anything that she thinks isn’t right.  And that’s right about where her fight with Harry Potter, Google and Hollywood come in.  They want her to conform and she just isn’t in to that.

In an interview with wired.com, Ursula talks a bit about each of these controversies.

Google runs the internet, everyone that’s doing anything on the internet knows that Google is to the internet what Sky Net is to the future of the human race.  (all pervading)  Apparently the big G used its enormous weight to push around the Writer’s Guild until they decided to accept their offer on some legal stuff…  (What offer?  Read the Wired article for a bit more information.) Ursula resigned from the Authors Guild (that’s a link to her site where you can read more about it) over the matter.  Yeah, she kinda gangster like that.

What about Harry Potter? What could anyone have against Harry Potter?

She doesn’t actually have anything against Harry Potter himself.  I’m sure she doesn’t mind him running around with his broom and lightening forehead doing whatever it is that Hogwarts wizards do when they’re not fighting the forces of him.  The war, her war, is more along the lines of not wanting to create another Harry Potter written by Ursula K. Le Guin, which various publishers want very badly.  After the hardware she’s won I think she has the right to write what she likes, and though her fans don’t number in the millions, they are very loyal and quite extensive.  I’m one of them.  The Wizard of Earthsea was one of the books that changed the way I thought about fantasy.

Hollywood…

The war with Hollywood is a different story, or rather, it’s the story that thousands upon thousands of people have been fighting since the beginning of time the blockbuster.  Artists want to create art and Hollywood wants to create a marketing tidal wave that washes over all of the world, a wave made of action figures, films, commercials, spin offs, cartoons, soft drinks, cups, candy, clothes and freshly minted movie stars.  She also doesn’t like the fact that they stretch the truth, or what she calls ‘lying.’  I think you can see where the conflict started.  Winning critical awards for writing does nothing for Hollywood except convince it that you can legitimize a marketing tidal wave.

I’m not even going to mention what she had to say about Philip K. Dick, either.

But while Ursula fights the evil forces of Cobra, all the rest of us are going to be taking Write About Dragons’ FREE writing class starring Brandon Sanderson so we can round up just enough clout to battle one of these giants that Ursula seems to take on every other week. Not that we’re actually going to (there are, after all, naps that need to be battled as well), but we’d like to be able to fight Sky Net if we absolutely had to. (After our nap, that is.)

She seems a bit more upstanding than Neil Gaiman (Neil Gaiman’s Secret: Don’t Work, Get Used to Failure, Lie About Your Experience and Have No Idea What You Are Doing) or John Scalzi (Scalzi Kind of Admits to Being a Hitman, But Says Robin Hobb Safe, For Now) but then who am I to say who is right and who is wrong? I’m certainly not your friendly neighborhood spider man.

Or am I?

-d

 

 

The Best Sci-fi and Fantasy Short Story Writer Lies to Children, Writes in the Nude and Wins Hugo’s Like Jon Snow Makes Enemies

Harlan Ellison can’t be bothered when he happens to have a moment of inspiration.  That means if he’s in bed, sans clothing, (I mean who doesn’t sleep naked??) he jumps up and hurries to his writing apparatus and starts banging keys.  But when you have 4 Hugo awards in the short story category, no one questions your methods.  They might snigger, laugh behind their hand or even tell an outright joke, but after throwing four pieces of epic hardware on the trophy shelf, no one questions Harlan’s method.

In an interview, Harlan explains his naked-ness along with a few other points of view he happens to like holding on to.  When asked what he’s watching on television these days he replies, ‘The test pattern.’  I laughed when I read that, because the test pattern (a color correction tool) has gone the way of Firefly.  It used to fill television screens when a station ‘went off the air’ at 2 a.m., something you’d find yourselves staring at, bleary eyed, when you finally woke up after having fallen asleep during your favorite t.v. show.

Harlan bemoans the progress of the human race and suggests, in the interview, that maybe we should hand it over to the cockroaches.  Ellison likes to say things that incense people to some kind of emotional reaction.  Perhaps, he uses that in his writing.  Maybe that’s something all of us could use in our writing.  Figuring out what traits an author possesses that directly lead to success on the battlefield, er, the writing world, is nearly impossible.  Well, except reading, though Harlan doesn’t do much of that anymore.

But then Harlan doesn’t have anything else to prove.  I mean he voiced himself on The Simpsons.  If you’re wondering if you’re an icon in the United States just flip on the old telly and see if your likeness is on The Simpsons or South Park.  I check every few weeks and, sadly, there is no sign of me.  I guess I should wait until I win a Hugo first.  But, then, I might just be waiting forever.  

Harlan apparently enjoys attention as he is known to sit down in the middle of anywhere– a bookstore, art gallery, or convention and write a story.  On the floor with a typewriter kind of ‘write a story.’  When a young boy, upon hearing the punch of the keys, asked his mother what exactly Harlan was beating on, his mother answered, “It’s a typewriter.”  “What’s that?” the boy asked, wide eyed.  Harlan, with a twinkle in his eye, said, “It’s magic! I think into it and what I want comes out!”  The boy then demanded his mother get him one.

Yes, he also talks a bit about Hemingway in the interview, that and the re-release of his first novel Web of the City, but what I’ll remember is that he lied to a child, writes in the nude and wins Hugo awards like a skee ball player wins nearly useless but still somehow awesome tickets.

Remember, this site is hosting an absolutely FREE writing class with video tutorials starring Mr. Brandon Sanderson himself.  If you’re interested sign up here.

-d

 

James Stoddard Isn’t Neil Gaiman, But He’s Putting the Work In

The High HouseJames, who has three books listed on Amazon (here), is not Neil Gaiman, but he finished three books that he felt were ready to be read.  (This person did not feel the same way) But, Warner Books did and published The High House (link above.)  I’m not sure how I came across his blog, (I read a lot) but I did and found a very interesting article.  The premise of this article was a question that he proposed to answer.      

“So, how does a young writer shorten the time it takes to become salable?” — J. Stoddard

In a pretty humble manner he attempts to answer that question. (You can read the article here.)  Or, I’ll just summarize it for you.  Here are the spark notes for said article by a guy not named Neil Gaiman.

  1. Spend ten thousand hours writing.  I’ve read this book (Outliers – read the amazon reviews, it’s amazing) and if you somehow missed it, pick it up quick, because if you plan on becoming a super hero, you’re going to need a guide.
  2. Learn how to write a sentence.  Seriously.  It may sound condescending, but if you read the article you’ll see that it is anything but.  He recommends some books to read (without Amazon links???), one of them being a “work book” that is very “boring.”  He’s making this sound like work here.  Didn’t he read my Neil Gaiman article?  I’ll let it slide…this time.
  3. Master Dialogue.  I’ve always been one to make everyone sound the same:  Just like me.  (Here’s my article The 5 Biggest Mistakes I Made Writing a Fantasy E-book!) Well, maybe he’s on to something here.  He makes a suggestion for another book to read.  (Which one?  Go read the article)  He talks a bit about POV and other mundane things.  I think I’ll stick to just smashing the keys, but for those of you crazy enough to want some advice from someone out there putting the work in, someone just like you — give James a read.
  4. Start with short stories.  James wrote something for Amazing Stories which was purchased by Stephen Spielberg.  I’ve heard of this Spielberg guy.  He made (Dan’s Top Ten Movies of All Time) Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Epic.
  5. Use flat characters to make your main characters round.  Interesting point here, which he actually takes the time to back up.  I’m more into the making of wild claims with zero proof, but that hasn’t worked so far.
  6. Plot, either plan it out or suffer the repeated rewrite consequences.  I’ll take option B, please.
  7. Acknowledge that you emulate your favorite authors.  Then stop it.  That made me laugh writing that.  I love Hemingway, and I’m always trying to stop myself from emulating his writing, but it’s hard, because he’s soooo good at that words thing.  On a side note:  Hemingway would literally assault me if he heard me say my writing was emulating his.  And not assault me in the virtual John Scalzi way, either.
  8. He has some random quote to live by.  And that’s about it.  The piece was long with lots of sentences, but who has time for that?  I just cut it down to 573 words.  Yay, me.

Read the article if you’re actually curious.

Sign up for the Brandon Sanderson FREE writing class.

Read my bio…(it’s kind of amusing.  To me anyway.)

note:  I do not know James, nor am I affiliated with his work in any way.

Rothfuss Does Not Approve of Your Dragons, Sir.

Rothfuss took 7 years to write The Name of the Wind, (my second favorite book of all time) and in all that time, from age 20 to 27, not once did the now 38 year old Rothfuss consider adding a dragon. Furthermore, he does not approve of your dragons, either.  Yes, you at the computer terminal, the eager fantasy reader-slash-writer that gleefully added dragons to your story, novel or ramblings.  (Like I did. – oops)

And dragons are just the tip of the iceburg of fantasy staples that Patrick has banished from his story of Kavothe.  He also does not approve of magical hoo-ha.  Yeah, hoo-ha.  Also less than brilliant wizards and elves with bows.  Dwarves and axes as well.  No dwarves from deep in the earth obsessed with digging and gems and axes that tear many things asunder.  No vampires, helpless damsels and absolutely no “chosen one” running around fulfilling a prophecy.  No.  None.  Nilch.  Nada.

Rothfuss just might smash someone all Scalzi like if he finds out you used dragons against his very-well-meaning-but-total-bummer advice.

I understand almost all of that except the dragons part.  No dragons?  I mean, dragons are fantasy, right?  What’s a fantasy story without dragons?  It’s a story.  What’s A Song of Ice and Fire without the dragons?  It’s a medieval story with a whiff of the supernatural.  I might never have read my absolute favorite books if Martin had, as he had originally intended, not added the dragons.

In the interview, Rothfuss is asked why?  Well, “Here’s the thing, dragons are cool.” He replied.  What he doesn’t like is the manner in which dragons are used.  Or, more accurately, overused.  It’s the trite way in which authors use these fantasy tools (as he refers to them) that Rothfuss disapproves of so much.

Here a dragon, there a dragon everywhere the hero is slaying dragons.

Bad story telling has used up the sheer cool power of a lot of things, but I’d hazard a guess that though Rothfuss might disapprove of dragons in bad writing, he does in fact love the dragons that made dragons what they are.  And further he will continue to love all of the epic incarnations of dragons to come that will be set down with both skill and love.  It’s up to us, as writers, to examine our stories, our plots, and our ideas that we might live up to both his, but more importantly our own standard of dragon creation.  I say we need dragons, but no ordinary dragons.  We need Smaug and his ilk.

But, no vampires.  I do not approve of your vampires, sir.

Maybe we both need a writing workshop?  Sign up for the FREE Brandon Sanderson Writing Class and find out if Sanderson can help us get approval for our dragons.  The magic system of my upcoming epic fantasy novel Prince of the Morning revolves around a dragon, so, I kind of need the big guys… lol.

Gaiman didn’t mention dragons in his advice to writers (Don’t Work, Get Used to Failure, Lie About Your Experience and Have No Idea What You Are Doing), but I’m wondering if he disapproves of our dragons, too.

 

 

 

Neil Gaiman’s Secret: Don’t Work, Get Used to Failure, Lie About Your Experience and Have No Idea What You Are Doing

Don’t work, get used to failure, lie about your experience and have no idea what you are doing are only some of the crazy things Neil Gaiman recommended to graduating seniors at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia.  Neil Gaiman is one of the giants of fantasy fiction with such works as American Gods and Neverwhere.  This guy is good, so good in fact, that if he says that you as an aspiring novelist should do something, you would be crazy not to do it.  Crazy.  If he says cheat, well, what choice do you have?  Gaiman wrote The Sandman!  If he says lie, well, what choice do you have?  If he says don’t work, well, what choice do you have?

He actually said all of this to a bunch of graduating seniors.  He told them to go out and make mistakes.  If I didn’t love this guy for his beautiful prose in American Gods I would certainly love him now.  He has, as most of you might have guessed, some great reasons for giving out this crazy advice.  It seems he thinks every single one of you has such a unique view of the world that YOU are the secret to great writing.  If you let what is most amazing about you out then you will create things that are worth reading, worth doing.

He really said all this.  Read Gaiman’s speech here and let him fill in the gaps.  See?  This Gaiman guy is practically an arch villain!  He actually goes on to recommend that we should listen to his advice even though he didn’t listen to another great writer’s advice, but should have.  Absolute chaos!  The only thing I deduced from the entire article is to create art under all circumstances.  If your husband runs off with the secretary, create great art.  If you stub your toe, create great art.  If Hulk smashes then you should create great art.  If you create art that isn’t that great, then create great art.

This is all either very empowering or Gaiman has a master plan to confuse and misdirect all budding writers thus nullifying all potential rivals before they ever get a chance to dethrone him.  In either case it is an absolutely brilliant plan worthy of some kind of evil genius award.  I can’t figure out what to think, but then I’m no American Sherlock Holmes, nor Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes and I, certainly, am not nor will I ever be the BBC Sherlock Holmes.

On a more serious note, it truly is an inspiring speech and I recommend everyone read it or better yet listen to it.  Gaiman is an author everyone should be reading and if you haven’t read his work, after listening to this speech I don’t think there is anyway you could not.  He is a master of his art and further he has that rare ability to inspire others to be better.

Seems from this article about John Scalzi being a hitman, that Scalzi and Gaiman might make pretty good friends.  Or maybe it’s just me having a man crush on them both and wanting us all to go to the “Author’s Club” together and hang out.

Sign up for the FREE Brandon Sanderson writing class.  Ends soon, so hurry.

Scalzi Kind of Admits to Being a Hitman, But Says Robin Hobb Safe, For Now.

For some of you it might come as a surprise that John Scalzi (author of Old Man’s War) is somewhat of a hitman when it comes to laying verbal destruction of biblical proportions on relatively unsuspecting souls over the internet.  And if you’ve read the fantastic Old Man’s War then you understand completely, the man has some intense visions of violence rattling around in his head.  He has a legion of fans who, apparently, surf the internet for possible LZ’s (landing zones) for his wrath as enthusiastically as I search for signs that Firefly will get uncancelled. Basically, if you are being mean to the internet then they will find you.

I may be willfully misunderstanding his blog post entirely, but what I gathered (and you can double check me here) is that, though his legion wants him to lay waste Drizzt Do’Urden style to Robin Hobb for flaming blog writing, he has chosen to be merciful.  Turns out he might be nicer than we all thought, which just shatters my dream of reading about him blasting whoever is responsible for the cancellation and continued hiatus of Captain Malcom Reynolds and the crew of Firefly.

Robin apparently went off (post since removed) on all of us who are wasting our time blogging instead of finishing our fantasy novels.  Writing instead of writing, as it were.  Personally, there are better targets for the WRATH OF KHAN SCALZI than the hugely talented Hobb (author of one of my top 20 fantasy novels of all time: Assassin’s Apprentice (The Farseer Trilogy, Book 1)) who does nothing more than make a very good point.  How dare her?  Write?  Obviously she didn’t glance at my To Do List (Writing is behind 11, find out who cancelled Firefly and 19, figure out why the neighbor’s dog keeps barking.)  However, I applaud Scalzi for lifting the writ on her internet avatar’s life.

Oh, just so you know, Scalzi’s wrath is fueled by a particularly cruel and vindictive feline who apparently does nothing but devise rather devious attack skirmishes against Scalzi in the middle of the night.  He responds, rather despondently, that these attacks “Strangely enough…seem(s) to affect my sleep schedule.”  He’s definitely getting soft, letting a kitten get away with unanswered aerial night raids.

Writing apparently has to be written, and those who are procrastinating (*ahem*) by writing blog posts instead of best sellers have been put on notice.  Whoever you are, wherever you are, Robin Hobb does not approve and John Scalzi might just find you (well, your avatar) and flame you.  I will also take a moment to state, for the record, that I do not approve of myself writing articles instead of best sellers either.

On the other hand there is my article about Jim Butcher’s DIRE WARNING against writing.

Further proof that I do almost anything except work on my book.