Lecture #6: Worldbuilding Part Two — Brandon Sanderson on Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy

Welcome to the sixth lecture of my BYU 2020 creative writing class focused on writing science fiction and fantasy.

Today's class is the second part of my series on worldbuilding.

[tawnyflower-inyy]

1:05:08 Can you imagine having Brandon Sanderson tell you “That’s a good idea, you should write that story”? Like shit dude, now I really gotta

[TheMusicscotty]

By the way, this man is not only a genius author, he's a brilliant educator with wonderful inflection, masterful pacing, and positive examples. Bravo.

[maegansmith]

Love the fact he's upfront about what he can and can't spell, because it really eases my mind over the idea of "because I write, I should know all the words in my language, and how to spell them."

[brittney]

As someone writing her first Fantasy series and can't afford to go back to school for creative writing/English, this kind of education is priceless.

Thank you Brandon for sharing your knowledge.

[golinvox]

"My real life is boring" probably my favorite answer

[sofiazin]

13:03 "The murder happened at Comicon and it was Naruto day"
*The detective is a mom*
Watch in agony as she asks every person in the place if they are Naruto.

[sthiel]

Has anyone else become swiftly addicted to these videos?

[mikelsmith]

I actualy put down Stormlight midway through Kalladin's apearance. (i think that is the third prologue) I was SO burned down with the other two that I just didn't care anymore.
Now the problem was that that was the first time I read something from Brandon. After reading mistborn first era, the reckoners, warbreaker, elantris and a bit of mistborn era two, I begun stormlight again and it became one of my favorite series now.
I understand why he says that was a big risk.

[victoriadinh]

1:40 What does World Building mean to you?
6:00 World Building in the context of Sci-Fi and Fantasy
8:08 or 8:40 World Building in service of Story > Info Dumps/Ways to Conveying information in an interesting way
13:42 Pyramid of Abstraction > Showing vs Telling >
22:04 >Grounding you into the World First/Through the Eyes of a Character > Mistborn/Ways of Kings/Robert Jordan
25:19 mini Q&A. Watson/Apprentice Characters, Portal Fantasy, Journal Entries

The List: Examples of World building Enhancing the Story
30:40 John Wick
33:00 Avatar The Last Airbender
38:19 Firefly
41:32 The Expanse
42:25 Dune

43:56 Physical Setting and Cultural Setting
55:39 Exercise: Enhancing Genre(/Plot Archtype) by coming up with ideas that focus on one Aspect of Setting
1:08:11 Debriefing the exercise, Pick a Narrow Focus and Interconnect them

[richardlabontee]

Very grateful for two things:
1. Sanderson's fab lectures.
2. The positivity of the comments in this thread! It is wholly refreshing to see peoples energized and thoughtful reactions to the work of others and to see selfless and respectful sharing of opinions, jokes, and joy for writing. Thanks for the ray of light, y'all!

[SheWhoWalksSilently]

Shout out to the guy who said Avatar: the Last Airbender and everyone went

[nothinmulch]

The section on abstract vs concrete information is such a nugget of gold! I'm planning on using this to help me become a better DM for D&D.
Notes:
Concrete: all of the readers/listeners are imagining the same thing in their head. The benefits of this information is that there is less dispute or confusion among readers, and it puts them more in the minds of the characters, and less in the mind of the author. A negative is that it can slow down a story when you explain too much, often leading to boredom.
Abstract: all of the readers/listeners are imagining different things based on personal biases and life experiences. The benefits are that you can easily talk about the themes in your story, and the reader can make their own conclusions about the subject. A negative is that it can feel like a lecture from the author instead of the character's point of view, and it often leads to disparity about what the author meant.

- More words often equals more concrete information, less words often means more abstract.
-Anytime you can use less words to make something more concrete, do it!
-You should be writing in concrete terms most of the time, but the reader still needs some abstractness.

[TheTrueReiniat]

Nice to be able to watch these without incurring into CRIPPLING DEBT.

[Ruylopez]

Just purely from a teaching standpoint it was fun to see how animated the class got when they were allowed to shout out the physical or cultural aspect of different genres, and suggest their story concepts. Really fun teaching technique to get the class involved.

[aro]

Two Sanderson Lectures in a week? Easily the best thing that has happened this week.

[glomar]

"The weather disintegrating their clothes"
Are you sure that doesn't belong to romance?
XD DYING

[IHSchwingo]

I picked flora and mystery and then thought: what if the trees started killing people? Before I knew it I had a declining career as a filmaker. Thanks Brandon....

[robbybevard]

Coming to this video two years later, its interesting to hear Brandon talking about how he's never done a fast blitz release where he announces an entire line at once... before the Secret Projects happened.

Also really wierd to hear someone shout out "Coronavirus destroys China's economy" as a horror idea. That must have been super early days in the pandemic before it got everywhere.

[thatshowiroll]

I'm a romance writer and this class is still very useful to me. This is just a very good writing class - scifi or not.

[blairnixon]

The encouragement Brandon offers is amazing. A lot of literary educators teach in the manner of "don't do this, don't do that" whereas these lectures are so full of positivity. Very grateful this is publicly available.