BYU Lecture - Brandon Sanderson’s ENGL 321 Class (playlist.)
If you've got 18 hours of your life you can devote to learning not only how to write a book, but how to market it, find an agent, and hopefully get it published, then, this, you know, is, one way you can do that, I suppose.
I'd be remiss, watching these, if I didn't post anything on my writing blog today, so here we go. I actually think we've got a good one on our hands today...
well I feel like sort of an idiot right now.
I was just thinking about the golem, and how if it were Finn then why he'd need to set up a chain of dominoes to topple and all that if he could just interact with his future self anyway... The problems brought up last time about having the golem as Finn from the past, right?
I was thinking about this, and realized, where is that golem coming from, anyway? Is he there from the start of the story, where that would be the case that the whole mastermind gambit set-up is unnecessary? Then I realized that , there's totally a time period from before when the golem joins the team... because it's only like halfway through the story, maybe even 2/3rds, when Dwayne "Rabbi" Champion liaises with the agency.
specific plot placement of Rabbi's arrival: pros and cons
I'm still not sure how far along Rabbi shows up, though. There are a few specific reasons why it'd be a good idea for him getting placed later or sooner.
Sooner:
- More time for specific suspicion of the golem as being a double agent (all that Jewminati intrigue stuff.)
- The idea of the golem even being part of the team isn't as nuts if Rabbi can (probably) be trusted, which would come from an earlier introduction of the character (if there's no time for trust there, then there's no golem character in the first place.)
- More time for Rabbi's gadgets to track down Finn (Finn being attacked by monsters is always good, especially if there's a mysterious increase of like pocketwatches and stuff that attack him -- if that's going to be a mystery, then it needs to be a major plot point, so the more of that the better.)
- More time for Finn to track down the source of the gadgets (story-wise, detective work is always compelling.)
- Less time for the golem in the plot (which is a good thing in the sense that he's only needed as a spy from the past to know where the dominoes should be set up, and the longer the golem hangs around the less of the plot has to be this brilliant mastermind scheme: the more of it that's a gambit, the cooler.)
These issues could easily be resolved if we let both of them breathe; the first book would be a doorstop though and I don't want to have to continue that for any other books I write. Maybe we could start out book 1, just saying that it is a normal thing to be attacked by stuff, but it's gotten especially bad lately for some reason. Kinda strikes me as a cop out, though. If the volume's shorter, all this plot going on would be especially twisty, (twisty stuff either way,) but... I can't do that.
a lot about my writing process (and what it says about me)
I realized something watching Brandon plot, not long before realizing the Rabbi-golem-Finn thing which prompted me to get on doing a post today. My whole writing style, and not only that but the whole reason that I write, is to let it breathe. The first thing I look for is the cool idea, the hook, and then I need to let it breathe for as much juice as I can squeeze out of it, illuminating every consequence the hook has to enable maximum coolness, building the story around that, that would showcase the maximal effect. I can't just introduce something then twist the plot without showcasing all that I can. Which is why I actually don't write that much, I suppose... 90% + of my time working on a story or whatever, on any given day, is worldbuilding.
Of course, hooks become so much cooler if you reject the obvious ideas about them and dig deeper and deeper, so maybe my need to have not just the obvious ideas or deeper ideas, but every idea showcased is kind of undermining me a lot of the time, but, we can always trim later, can't we?
red herring I just thought of
The steampunk golems and all the creatures that jump Finn, themselves, are THE MOLE. The threat is internal to the agency, in the fact that creatures can just find Finn wherever, right? Maybe those are somehow the ones leaking secrets to outside the agency. Hardly seems secure, having a privileged agent be a basically literal magnet for that kind of thing (random blankness? cat on the space key, don't feel like backspacing; sorry.) It's kind of like how Wonder Woman is the secretary for the Justice League, when her superweakness is being tied up and she carries around a magical lasso that forces you to tell the truth. Never really struck me as the wisest idea to let that woman anywhere near the secrets of the most powerful heroes on Earth, but, maybe that's just me... (She's still the secretary, right? I could factcheck that right now, but, I'm on a time limit here.)
Security issues aside, Finn can always get out of trouble, of course, and I never told you but one of the reasons they keep Finn around is precisely because he can build up contacts through the creatures that attack him. Which streamlines the "can-we-trust-Rabbi" issue, and allows the golem to become a team member in time for plot stuff.
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