Main Points
- Writing isn’t about inspiration, the muses, or your lucky rabbit foot.
- Writing is about SKILL.
- Gaining that skill is a matter of sufficient practice. The skills of good writing must have time to seep down into your subconscious.
- If you want to get good at writing novels, write novels; if short stories, write short stories. etc.
Next up: Ideas are cheap
I wanted to audit his class so much, but it didn’t work out for me this semester… Thank you so much for posting these! Please continue for the sake of all those who are now scrambling for an Asimov subscription!
Thank you so much for posting this. I am a big fan of Brandon and of Writing Excuses so getting his lectures online is an incredible resource for me to improve my writing.
Delightful to see these on the web. Thanks so much for putting these up. I totally wish I could be in this class. You are fortunate to have such an experience. Keep it up.
Thankyou so much for uploading this, this is awesome.
Lucky duck! Thanks for sharing!
These are really good! Lots of useful advice. Any chance these will be available for download?
It would take some work but I think I eventually will. Audio would be far easier. Do you have your heart set on downloading the videos though?
I would love a direct audio download actually.
An MP3 would be incredible! That way I could load these onto my ipod and listen while I work out!
Actually if you have RealPlayer you can download and instantly convert flash videos from most websites, including most Youtube videos. Also if you use or download Firefox there are a few addons that you can download under the tools menu which will do the same thing. If you can’t convert instantly, you can choose an addon that downloads as an MP4 file, import it into a free recording program called Audacity and it will convert it to audio only for you. You just need to save mp3 or wav or whatever when you save the result.
MP3 Format would be wonderful!
Go to YouTube on Chrome or Firefox and use an extension to download the audio version.
I love the bit about short stories. Thank you for that advice!
MORE!!! MORE!!!!! =)
Thank you so much, for putting these up. I have written several novels over the years and have finally decided I have more learning to do. It takes time for some of us to learn enough humility to seek out those that can help us. Thanks again!
Great but need it in french.
I don’t understand english. Just a few words
These are great classes, really interesting points and just listening about writing is facinating (: Just one thing you should change (after wathcing class 3), if you are going to make “Season 2″: listeners can’t hear audience. I know you can’t give microphone to them, and even if you could, it would be slow, but just ask Brandon to repeat what they say and it’s fixed. It should’nt even sound stupid, all my other teachers have done that, and it’s pretty natural. Other than that great classes, even though Brandons writing is next to useless
Maybe don’t zoom so close so the camera doesnt have to move all the time?
I tried to overcome that this year by having a student facing microphone and then ramping up the volume on the portions where students speak. You’ll have to tell me whether or not I succeed.
And as far as the zooming, the problem is that it’s so jerky, I know – which sucks. I have two camera views this time including a wider angle view so hopefully that should cut down on the distractions of moving. I’m a total amateur but I try to please
I’m deaf; is there any possibility these videos could be captioned?
That is an awesome idea David – the only problem is that someone would need to go through and make a transcript of all the lectures so that I could put them up. I’ll try and write a blog post asking someone if they could do this sometime soon