James Patterson on writing: Plotting, research, and first drafts | Big Think

James Patterson on writing: Plotting, research, and first drafts
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Teaching kids to read is one of the most powerful things adults can do.

Loving reading can be a literal lifesaver.

What can books do? Shrink the prison population and grow the economy.
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JAMES PATTERSON:

James Patterson is the world's bestselling author, best known for his many enduring fictional characters and series, including Alex Cross, Max Einstein, the Women's Murder Club, Michael Bennett, Maximum Ride, Middle School, I Funny, and Jacky Ha-Ha. Patterson's writing career is characterized by a single mission: to prove to everyone, from children to adults, that there is no such thing as a person who “doesn't like to read," only people who haven't found the right book. He's given over a million books to schoolkids and over forty million dollars to support education, and endowed over five thousand college scholarships for teachers. He writes full-time and lives in Florida with his family.
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TRANSCRIPT:

James Patterson: There's a program that I'm involved with at the University of Florida, right now Florida the percentage of kids reading at grade level is 43 percent. The best in the country is Massachusetts at 62 percent so nobody should be standing up and going look at our stay we're 62 percent. So it's not good anywhere. The University of Florida has been working on a program for five years up in the Gainesville area, not Gainesville itself because there are too many professor's kids in the town, but outside and they have it up into the 80s. So I've been working with them and we went to the state legislature in April and we met with the head of the senate and several senators and the house and they gave us two counties in Florida and they said you don't have to get 80s but if you get good numbers you get numbers in the 60s we will take that program across the state, which would be spectacular. It's a win/win/win for the kids, it's a win for the teachers, it's a win for the state. Everybody wins. And when I go and talk to the legislature and when I go in and talk to big groups of librarians or teachers I'll always say I'm here to save lives. And I really want people to get that in their heads because that's what's happening.

I go sometimes now to prisons and primarily what you'll find there are a lot of relatively young African-American kids, and most of whom didn't read at all in high school or almost none, weren't good readers; now they read like crazy because it's the only thing they can do. And the irony is incredible. Most of them are pretty good readers now. Had they learned, had we got that percentage of kids reading at grade level up higher to the point where they got to high school they were competent readers they might have stayed with it. But if you get to high school, you get to the ninth grade and you are really like, "A-bra-ham Li—," you know, you can't keep up here, and you go "I can't do this. It's not relevant, I can't do it, so I'm not going to stay here, I'm not going to stay in school," which is a disaster. And I really mean it when I say that we can save lives—and thousands of lives. If we do this thing in Florida we will save thousands of lives in Florida. And any state that can solve the problem is going to save thousands of lives. Plus you can improve the economics of the state because you're going to have that many more people who can go out into the workforce, that have choices. That's important. It's a hugely important thing.

And I think it's kind of a sacred mission. I have an imprint at Little Brown called Jimmy Books and our mission, which is—I think kind of simple but I think it's smart—is when a kid finishes a Jimmy Book they'll say, "Please give me another book," as opposed to, "I hate books. I don't like to read." Because there are millions of kids running around this country right now that do not like to read, they've been introduced to it incorrectly.

If we taught film to little kids and we started with Ingmar Bergman movies, then they'll go "Oh I don't really like movies." And unfortunately that's what we do with kids in a lot of English classes! Let's go through a million rules you need to learn, and that's not the most interesting thing, and then we're going to make you read a lot of stuff that isn't really relevant to you yet or you're not really that interested, and then you wonder why kids are going, "I don't like to read." Because you're introducing it to them badly. So I want to try t...

[jacemachine]

Amazing. I have worked in a Bookstore for over 5 years, and the only books James Patterson published are ones that other authors pay him to put his name on them. Go to any James Patterson section of a bookstore. The majority of James patterson titles are not written by James Patterson. Old James is not a prolific author anymore. At least Stephen King still writes his own books all by himself.

I'll leave this section from Wikipedia right here:

"Patterson has been criticized for co-authoring many of his books and for being more of a brand that focuses on making money than an artist who focuses on his craft."

Easy to confirm with a walk into your local bookstore. I USED to love his Alex Cross novels.

[ChessMasteryOfficial]

*It is never too late to be what you might have been.*

[epbrown]

It can be so hard to let go of research. I once spent a week researching the area a character starts out in - the weather, the types of architecture, the history, types of businesses. I must have written about 20 pages of notes on what his house was like. Then I moved him somewhere else.

[zendavis]

All you have to do is study David Foster Wallace, The author of Infinite Jest. Also study Ernest Hemingway and his good friend F. Scott Fitzgerald.

[StateofFerg]

I've gotten to the outline point for many books. I've only gotten to a first draft for one.

[zackmitchell]

There’s a reason he’s constantly talking about the outlines of his books— because that’s all he writes for them! He doesn’t actually write any of his books aside from Alex Cross— he writes the outlines for them and he then proceeds to send them to other authors who turn out drafts under his “editorial supervision”. In other words, he doesn’t actually write the books himself. That’s why he cranks out 30 books a year. I don’t care how talented you are or how hard working you are— you cannot write 30 books a year all by yourself. James Patterson isn’t an author; he’s a brand name.

[TopTenTenets]

Pretty Informative Video!
Thx a lot <3

[CosmicTurbo]

I don't know whether it's true or not, but I heard a long time ago that Patterson uses ghost writers.

[adamfrederick]

"I admire his success but he can't write for shit." Stephen King on James Patterson

[TheSeventhStoic]

I have a bad habit of taking writing advice from writers who I think are terrible.

[toddwheatley-dr-know]

Effective communication is an essential skill for success. Therefore a link to this video and keywords have been added to the DR-KNOW website by IQ-2k Information Services

[andrewwilcock]

No author could humanly turn out the number of manuscripts this man does? Well, he doesn't! Anyone in the biz knows he gets other authors work tweaks the manuscript then slaps his name on it. I'd love to know how long it takes him to write and edit a 95, 000 word novel. His comments stand about research etc, . But the rest, sorry, he has a team working for him and just ploughs it out to make money.

[LeonidasGGG]

If it was that easy, everyone would do it.

[ludens]

Terrible advice from a terrible writer. His stuff isn't worth the paper its printed on

[ArthropodSpidey]

He doesn't even write his own books. what a hack.

[EJ-bntc]

Patterson is one of the most disingenuous writers ever. He doesn’t even write most of this stuff and what he does write is SHIT. The first book of his series is passable, but as you read more it’s obvious he had no plan of what’s happening, usually cause he’s not even writing it.