Don't Write That Book (the best writing advice I've ever received) | 001

[@chowyee5049]

I cal this the Patrick Rothfuss effect. If you get too hung up on writing your magnum opus as your debut, you'll never finish it.

[@andscifi]

Starting with something you can actually write and finish is fantastic advice. Your first book is going to be hard enough no matter what you write. There is plenty of time to push yourself later.

[@JAM-gr6em]

I cannot believe this was your first video, it was so well put together with a great bit of advice at the core

[@F.C.Shultz]

Thank you!

[@collinthebenevolentbandit]

Wow I was writing my first novel, which has a lot of the elements you mentioned. And I have been thinking about it for years. I am 30,000 words in with lots of momentum, and I was feeling so good about it. Until I watched this video. Now I am completely discouraged. 😟

[@rachelthompson9324]

I wrote 5 books to prepare for the big book I had in my head for 30 years. I'm glad I waited before doing the big book, but frankly, all of my books have some big book qualities. I started working on my tenth recently and this one will be a dozy. Every one builds craft upon what came before. Writing never gets easy but it gets better and better if you work at it.

[@F.C.Shultz]

@@rachelthompson9324 love this approach. You just gave me an idea for a video!

[@zalamazu]

At the surface it's good advice, but I think the better advice is to just simplify your story. As in: don't put all your ideas into one thing. That's the main way to over complicate things. I get that creating short stories is easier, but short vs. long stories are two completely different ways of story telling, and forcing someone who is better with higher concepts to make a short story doesn't really work. Short stories aren't just short versions of long stories (ie. the tortoise and the hare wouldn't work if extended, and breaking bad wouldn't work if shortened.) Take Love Death and Robots for instance. The main problem with the show is that it has huge concepts with the potential for complex characters and worlds but it cuts them short (the episode Ice is the worst offender for this. It should've been a movie or miniseries). Of course, practicing with short stories is good if you just want to finish something, or see if you like then better than high concepts, but that shouldn't discourage you from starting with something long. You just need to simplify the concept (alien fantasy time travel thing sounds like too much, but who knows. Basically, even the longest stories have simple ideas, they just explore more themes.) Ultimately you should do what you're best at!!

[@LancelotSchaubert]

I don't think he should change his original story idea at all. I think he should build the skills from writing whatever other stories are simpler and, once those skills are present, write the BIG BOOK he's always dreamed of writing. Most careers are structured this way: Stephen King, Sanderson, etc. Folks seldom publish their big idea first, when they do its literal decades of revision and perfectionism like Rothfuss. Even Rothfuss admits his trajectory is a terrible one for even him, one no one should try to emulate, one that hinders his process, and that easier paths exist.

[@F.C.Shultz]

Short stories and novels are definitely different (at least they should be!). I think starting with the high concept story when first starting to write novels could lead to years and years of frustration because it’s hard to get the “win” of finishing a novel and the skills probably aren’t there yet. So, starting with a simpler novel sized idea is a great way to learn how to finish a book, which helps in a ton of ways!

[@oilairnalo]

I want to be a writer. Finished a novel. Best advice.

[@ajuwaaa]

i..... needed this. sometimes you get so swept up by the dream, you end up forgetting the craft - the thing that makes you happy; the making that inspires dreaming... thank you for that.

[@F.C.Shultz]

Wonderfully said!

[@FlyingFocs]

As someone who DOES have a huge space fantasy version of King Arthur... yeah, I am not starting with that. My current plan is to work on several stories before that. Currently got a Land Before Time style adventure with dinosaurs as characters (who don't talk), and maybe a children's fantasy

[@Sampai007]

Great video man!

[@F.C.Shultz]

I appreciate it!

[@Neamio]

Yeah W video bro

[@unclerat2131]

Start with writing a letter to a friend telling a real life event. Then write similar letters until you have a collection, and then you can start thinking about something bigger. Comments online work, too.

[@theq6797]

I am a writer with over 20 years of experience including 12 years of professionally writing. I've never publish any book and I decided to Write That Book or rather something bigger than that. So thanks for that advice, but no thanks.

[@joshbarnes2313]

Well, this advice seems to be for people without 20 years of writing experience. I'm sure you have the stamina and attention to detail to accomplish your goal just fine

[@theq6797]

@@joshbarnes2313 Yeah, although I am currently in a chapter that I don't like and it is second version of that chapter. It stopped my progress, because I can't skip it. Third version should work, but when I lost my momentum, so... funny thing that when you have time to write something like this you don't have enough experience, but when you have enough experience your time is very limited compare to time you have when you are in your 20s.

[@F.C.Shultz]

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

[@LancelotSchaubert]

“You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. “And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your while life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. Don’t write love poems; avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and it takes great, fully ripened power to create something individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in abundance. “So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty - describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. “And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world’s sounds-wouldn’t you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. - And if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it. “So, dear Sir, I can’t give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take the destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted. “But after this descent into yourself and into your solitude, perhaps you will have to renounce becoming a poet (if, as I have said, one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn’t write at all). Nevertheless, even then, this self-searching that I as of you will not have been for nothing. Your life will still find its own paths from there, and that they may be good, rich, and wide is what I wish for you, more than I can say. What else can I tell you? It seems to me that everything has its proper emphasis; and finally I want to add just one more bit of advice: to keep growing, silently and earnestly, through your while development; you couldn’t disturb it any more violently than by looking outside and waiting for outside answers to question that only your innermost feeling, in your quietest hour, can perhaps answer.” - Rilke

[@Drawperfectcircles]

“Read what you love to inspire you. Not what’s popular”. Apparently it’s good to examine what you love, whether good or bad and try understanding what you like about it and writing something like it.

[@F.C.Shultz]

@@Drawperfectcircles Love this! Reminds me of a Ray Bradbury quote in his book Zen in the Art of Writing: "If you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, or one ear peeled for the avant-garde coterie, that you are not being yourself. You don’t even know yourself. For the first thing a writer should be is-excited."

[@F.C.Shultz]

@@LancelotSchaubert So good. Worth reading over and over and often. Also, thanks again for letting me use that photo of you in the video!

[@Kaijuzilla-wf3re]

The best way to criticize a story, is to write one of your own