#writing lecture

[the960writers]

Brandon Sanderson's Writing Lecture (2025)

Brandon Sanderson returns with his newly updated lecture series on how you can write your stories. Throughout the course, Brandon will discu

Brandon Sanderson's Writing Lecture (2025)

Just a reminder, Brandon Sanderson uploads the new lectures from his creative writing college course to youtube.

Free college level education, especially for fantasy and science fiction writers. Do not miss out on this!

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First drafts are SUPPOSED to suck

IMPORTANT Reminder that it’s totally okay to hate that first draft with a passion. 

The first draft is for making it exist. That’s all. You can edit the shit out of it later, and you’ll need to if you ever want to do your story justice, but not on the first dang draft. 

STOP letting that voice inside win and make you feel bad about your writing! It’s the first draft. 

Fix it later. 

Try to just have fun. Make it exist and make it as ugly as it comes out. Just make sure there’s something to edit later. You can’t edit a blank page, remember. 

Something I once read:

Think process, not product. 

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If you’re struggling to start writing...I want to yell at all you writers (and myself too) ;-;

Obviously, there are countless ways to write, and the process can be very personal. That’s alright, and even encouraged. You’ll come up with your own plan when it comes down to writing, how much time you can allow yourself for distractions, how insecure you are about it, etc. 

And maybe you’re like me. 

Maybe you’ve been struggling to get started on a new WIP, or maybe you’re trying to get back into writing after taking a long break. Or maybe some other reason. 

I’ve been struggling for months to make it past 20k words. I hope to break that very soon with this idea I have at the moment. 

Whatever it is, it can be intimidating as heck to get going. To start. There are few sights more terrifying than a blank document with nothing on it, and a story at your fingertips, but you doubt that you can do it. How can you do justice to that lovely story you have in your heart?

Accept that you can’t...on your first draft.

It’ll take forever, unless you’re some kind of writing prodigy that can write a flawless draft on your first go. And most people aren’t. 

You’ll probably need at least three drafts to really see it take the shape that you always dreamed of. Again, this’ll be different for everyone, so maybe you’ll see it after the second draft, or maybe the sixth draft. 

It’s personal!!!

But that first draft will be terrible. And that’s okay!!!!! Accept it and make it better. The drafts will come later. You can get to those then.

Just get going. 

Tell that voice inside saying you can’t do it to shut up. Be aggressive with it. Just write anyway. Who cares if it’s not perfect? It’s the first draft, remember???

It’s totally okay if it sucks. If it didn’t, I might get jealous ;-;

Plan ahead and outline. 

Some people feel less overwhelmed when they outline. In detail, or roughly. Or somewhere in the middle. Whatever you want. You can write 30k outlines, or 2k outlines. Totally up to you.

Pants a little. 

Combine pantsing with plotting. Do both. Outline what you know for sure. Then outline/write it and come up with the rest as you go. You can plot the main plot points and then improvise the rest. Whatever you want. 

Pants a lot. 

Drop most of the plotting. I wouldn’t suggest not having any idea at all what you want the ending to look like, or what you want the inciting incident to be. But you can come up with it as you go as long as you have a vague idea. If you don’t want to write it down, then don’t.  

But be very free with it if that helps you to write that first draft. You can fix it later. Shrug it off for now. 

Put away the internet and just do it. 

Stop 👏 going 👏 on 👏 the 👏 internet 👏 to 👏 procrastinate 👏 

Just stop it. Close it. Tumblr, goodbye for half an hour. No more Pinterest. Instagram, shhh. 

EVERYBODY, and I mean everybody, is guilty of this. Well, no more. Sometimes, all it takes to get going is to get over your own procrastination and do it. 

Just write. Dedicate half an hour or so to your WIP, and you’ll feel good about yourself even if you don’t get much done. You put the effort in, and know your WIP just a tad better. 

MAKE YOURSELF. It’s hard, yeah. Don’t complain. Future you will thank you. 

Quantity over Quality. 

Write a lot. Get it all down. You can always delete scenes later if you don’t feel they belong. Just get a lot down. You’ll know your story way better, and you’ll know the characters so much better. It’ll be easier to make judgement calls when you’re going over your first draft and making big changes. 

You can make it better later. 

Just write it!

Compare your writing now to your past writing. 

It used to suck, right? Maybe it still does in your opinion. But you’ve gotten a lot better, haven’t you?

Hehehe...

Read reviews on Goodreads for bad books to see how good you are. 

This might feel like putting others down. 

It also might backfire, finding reviews for good books and seeing where you’re lacking. 

But hear me out. 

Bad books exist. No changing that. We can learn from others’ mistakes. Look at history. How many times have we avoided conflict because we learned from past mistakes in politics? They don’t need to be our mistakes to be worth something. 

Analyze bad movies and books and see what they did wrong. Do it better. It’s not a competition, but you can still improve using others’ mistakes and take the advice for yourself.

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I’m done now. 

;-;

Feel free to yell at me now. Please do. I need to be yelled at. I feel like it.

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