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Fantasy author Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn, Wheel of Time, Stormlight Archive) teaches a writing class where one of his lectures focuses on the notion that writ
by Kuiper 9y ago
Fantasy author Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn, Wheel of Time, Stormlight Archive) teaches a writing class where one of his lectures focuses on the notion that writing is more about skill/craftsmanship rather than ideas/inspiration:
I want to disabuse you of a few notions. Writing is not about inspiration. Writing is not about ideas. Writing, or more specifically, getting published, is not about luck. What is writing about, then? Writing is about skill. And today I want to try and prove this to you.
When someone sits down to play piano for you, how quickly can you tell if they're a good pianist or not? Basically everybody in this room can judge a pianist's level of skill within a minute or two of play. Not exactly, but you can know if this is someone who's good at piano, or if this is someone who's still an amateur at the piano. You can probably tell if this is a master versus someone who's just pretty good.
Editors, published writers, people who know what they're doing, can do the same thing with one page of your writing in the exact same way. That is why it's not about inspiration, ideas or luck, because in one page I can judge how good a writer you are. People wonder why can editors reject manuscripts or, in this new age, where we're sometimes bypassing editors, how come the readers just put something down after one page when they haven't given it a real shot.
You guys can judge this too. You've read enough, you know enough, you can judge if something is going to work for you pretty quickly. Perhaps not as quickly as most editors can, but you'll know. You'll read a chapter and you'll know if that person is a master, if they're in that medium grade where they've got some good things going on (it's still readable, but they're obviously not a master), or if this is someone's first novel they wrote when they were 12. You can tell all these things. So how do you develop this skill? Practice.
He goes on to note that ideas/inspiration are important, but not the most central part of what makes writing effective.
Many "creative" disciplines like writing, sculpting, and film are more about practiced and skilled craftsmanship than inspiration and ideas, whereas in some other fields, like maths and scientific discovery, breakthroughs really are about inspiration and ideas.
- matwood 9y agoIt's the old perspiration vs. inspiration. I would argue even in those other fields it's more perspiration. It may look like someone has this one off inspired idea, but then we're ignoring all the work they did to get the point where they could even have they idea. This often occurs with athletic endeavors too. People remember Jordan's game winning shots and talk about his talent (which of course he had), but they forget about the hours and hours and hours of work he put. Kobe Bryants and Kevin Durants workouts are the things of legends.
- hellofunk 9y agoI understand the point, but have to disagree a bit. Skill is as important in Math as anywhere else. The breakthrough ideas of Godel or Einstein would have been lost forever has those guys not also backed them up with solid mathematical evidence which requires great skill. Godel's proof and the complex math behind relativity and Einstein's fight to improve his math skills to justify his ideas are testament to this. Likewise, skill without ideas happens also. Hundreds or more of screenplays sell every year that will never be made into movies; the writing is technically good so the writers do make money, but the story ideas don't hit, and the buyers eventually realize this before wasting more money.