Brandon Sanderson on Good Habits

I have been keeping track of Write With Dragons on youtube. They have been putting Brandon’s lectures on writing for at least a couple of years now.

This one is on Developing Good Habits.

How to pace a story so that it hooks the reader

Pacing the story is something I heard of before. I never paid much attention to it. This is a very informative post on the subject. -John

Nail Your Novel

‘Tell me about pace,’ said one of the panellists in my video interview at John Rakestraw’s. If we hadn’t had a time limit I’d still be talking now.

A well-paced story is like an act of hypnosis. It has a travelling beat that takes control of the reader’s attention. It proceeds at just the right speed to trap the reader a little longer, urge them to turn another page.

How is it done?

With constant development and change.

You might assume pace is only a concern in fast-moving plots, such as thrillers. Not so. Every story will benefit if it is written with an awareness of pace; even a leisurely character journey.

Indeed, pace is a fundamental in most dynamic artforms – not just storytelling.

Video and music

If you’re making a video, you want to change something every 15 seconds. The change might be subtle, such as fading…

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Ask Correia 14: How to be a Professional Author

Great stuff. Ok. I admit it. I am a wannabe writer. I haven’t put much down on paper/computer screen for over ten years. I was reading William Bernhardt?’s red sneaker book on writing (cannot remember which one), but he said to commit to writing like it is a job. It is a job. Schedule it like a job. Show up on time and do the work. I haven’t been doing the work lately and it shows as I have nothing to show for it. I did write a 50,000 word monstrosity last year for nano. I had some good feedback on it. The rest of those I showed it to have been silent. I need to go back look at it. Edit it, check for things I don’t know it needed at the time. Hammer and forge it into something that might be good or it might not. Hell, I can always say, “I built this!” and be proud of that fact. – John

A New Writing Resource

Just the other month, I picked up a book on Amazon called The Emotion Thesaurus. I haven’t taken the time to look through it, but it was inexpensive so I had to have it. Also some of the other books I recently got said I need to bring out the emotion in the reader. Another plus for getting this book.

Anyways, I just cracked open this book and found out that the authors have a website: http://thebookshelfmuse.blogspot.ca/

The site is for helping writers in their descriptive endeavors. Something new that I don’t think I have much of on my bookshelf. Whether it is physical or electronic.

Neat.

Just going to put it in my bookmarks for now. Must resist temptation to sit there for a few hours or so.