I recently found another fantastic writing resource, Brandon Sanderson's channel. The first video is called "Lecture #1: Introduction - Brandon Sanderson on Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy" ... I'd link you to it, but then my comment might get stuck in the spam filter.
Something that works really well for me is not to read my inspirations, but read the things that inspired them. By meeting that certain idea further back on the road before it was fully developed, I have an opportunity to turn a different corner.
Totally the same. That was a huge turning point for "classical literature" for me as well. If I follow these threads back far enough, SURPRISE, they all lead to Melville, or Shakespeare, or Tolstoy, or, heck, to MILTON even. And once I got there, I was ready to actually enjoy the stories because I could see how they develop. I think there's a lot to be said for writers reading WAY above their paygrade. You're not gonna be able to write Anna Karenina. But if that's what you're reading, your characters are going to be way better. If you're training to run a 5k, and you've got a marathoner friend you run with, you're going to CRUSH that 5k.
A thing that I have started doing recently is that whenever I am consuming some media I ask myself, "how is this helping my work that I should/want to be doing". Sometimes it is obvious, "it is the same genre" or "it has a similar structure to what I was thinking about". But sometimes the answer is just "I want to do this and I will be happy if I do - which is good"! Re-affirming that things I am doing as things I am wanting to do and that they are helpful, is helping me a little bit.
Or you could do what Tolkien did: Don't plan, just write, and any time you run into a problem while writing, you stop until you figure out a solution, and when you do, you start over writing from the beginning again.
As for gardener vs architect, as a gardener I will say gardening a script is much more dangerous than gardening a book. They are both writing but books don't have constraints. Movie/show scripts do. Architects will always excel more in a script format because they plan around their constraints. If you're gardener, you could write a sequence of scenes by the seat of your pants, maybe even give them narrative fluff for your satisfaction, but don't actually write the script until you have a plan. I haven't done a lot of script writing but the little I have done I had to force myself to plan because you can't just wing time/resource constrainted mediums like that without a lot of pushback. For books? Go ahead
As a prose pantser, I think this is definitely true. I often lean toward script-writing advice because it’s so much more structured and I think viewing audiences are more sensitive to structure. I’ve experimented with my process and planning techniques because in everything else, I am a planner. I have an advanced degree in urban planning. Yet I find it incredibly difficult to do, or adhere to as a writer-I hated myself for a long time because of it. Luckily, a book-tuber (erin Brock, maybe) turned me onto the notion of “methodological pantser.” Essentially, i pants, but I’m aware of and practiced with the planning tools, so I’m developing a pre-pantsing development routine. Even if I don’t deploy those tools, however, they still shape how I think as I write. I hear other writers advise noobs to just write, and I kind of agree, but I think more often than not noobs end up solidifying their story and structure before they really should, making successive drafts harder to reimagine, thus fix.
Good way to put it. A lot of book readers don't mind some fluff/unoptimized pathing, some even like it; more pages to fill more time in a "mundane world." Efficient framework still benefits books, and terrible framework will kill them.... further, great framework can propel them into the brilliant-storytelling category.
Tell that to Kaufman, Tarantino, Aaron Sorkin, James Mangold, and Larry Wilson, among other successful gardener screenwriters. Just because gardening doesn't work for you doesn't mean it won't work for others and work very well. You can definitely garden successfully with the restraints of the visual form in mind.
My contribution as a gardener is: I find that I write first in scenes (a friend told me that Kurisawa does this, so it's fun to accidentally be lumped in with him) with a great idea of the overall story and then I get a bunch of scenes down, but certainly not all of them, nowhere close to it. "Scene nuclei", if you will, large battle scenes and important events, deep conversations that I know need to happen, etc. After I allow myself that more creative expulsion, I go into the architecture mode and start to construct and plan everything from there. I then see which scenes are missing (most of them), which I have and how they all start to connect. It's also early enough in the process (the very start) to where the events are malleable and I don't have to pull the problem out of the middle of the cake. I can bring in new characters, adapt others and make any changes to my core problems without disrupting everything I've done - because it isn't done yet. I typically look at a character's goals and see if the scenes surrounding them are natural, make sense+follow my universe rules and if they take enough/too much time and add subtract from there. I know nothing.
I call myself a plantser - plotter and pantser :) As I write my novel, I already have the canon figured out. I have key scenes brainstormed, but what I'm leaving to pantsing, are the actual scenes themselves that connect the key scenes together. It's fun to discover what your characters choose to do especially when you already have their core characters and how they'll develop throughout the story figured out. I'd say the plotting eases my anxiety, and the pantsing of the scenes and how they play out really bring out my excitement!
I feel this is almost all plotters. I can't imagine it being where you plan each scene and then get to the final draft. What are you writing at that point? You're just putting all those scenes in order and calling it a day, you basically already wrote the whole book.
@@upg5147 I plan everything before I write it. I set up an overall plot outline, then I go and write quarter outlines for each section, then I go and write scene outlines. After all that, You dont have to worry about forgetting anything or falling into any plot holes. I see it as organizing my lego block before I start pitting them together.
@@upg5147 Yes they are. I set up the main point of conflict between the characters first, then I go through and outline each relevant characters motivations so that when I start actually writing the dialogue I have a stronger idea if what they are actually “fighting” for in the specific scene. I also outline setting stuff and what not but thats the bulk of it.
I find the sweet spot for pantsing is leaving some room in my outline to have the characters take control of the story a little. Maybe there's a lull in the action and they decide they have a heart to heart in the heat of their dying campfire. And then maybe I cut that heart to heart because it was something I needed to know, but was boring as hell to read. By not getting too attached to the plan, I can savor the little surprises my characters can show me.
I'd call myself a chaotic planner. I have some gardener tendancies but I'm so busy with other creative works and school that writing is almost constantly set on the back burner for me. I haven't gotten the opportunity to sit down and write so I haven't had the chance to garden. I find I consume content about writing like this channel because it scratches that writing itch despite the fact that I don't have time to write. I end up in an endless loop of planning and changing and planning and changing because I can plan things out in my head while working or doing mundane tasks but can't/don't make the time to to sit down and actually write.
bruh i feel you on a spiritual level. theres this project ive been wanting to write out but so far i only got a rough outline of it (that the story itself is already deviating from in my head and on paper) and the story keeps building and changing in my mind every day. i dont make time to write because my creative energy is spent on schoolwork, and then the little i do write on a document i end up getting anxious about 😅 i think things'll liven up once graduation comes around
Agree agree agree, and I think the “hustle culture” dickish tone here is the way it NEEDS to be delivered. I know I’m the type of person to lean toward the Instagram reels for 2 hours over a dedicated rejuvenating movie, but obviously feel better when I commit to the latter. Feel the same way about movie theaters forcing you to do that. And one of my favorite things my screenwriting professor does is assign us films to watch specific to our project bc in the end that IS the best way to the end goal. And yet? Knowing all that? More often than not when left to my own devices I choose the device that fits in my pocket. I know you’re speaking against re-watches but I can picture myself coming back to this video a lot when I need motivation and need someone to yell at me about it. I’ve been needing a creativity specific hustle culture video. Thank you.
I think the “hustle culture” dickish tone (I see the first part, but not the dick-ish tone) it is not needed. I delve into productivity, How To Be Successful on TH-cam type video for a good while and what I learned after all of that is that once I started to liberate myself from this idea of being productive, of needing to grind to get things done so I can fulfill my goals and instead cultivated the intrinsic motivation I have to do what I want to do is when I started to not only feel better and less self-loathing for failing to get things done, but I also started to get things done. It could be a personal thing, and procrastination is a multifaceted issue that requires a multifaceted solution to truly deal with, but the mindset of distancing away from "hustle" and "grind" help me a lot. Although, the advice of actively and consciously choosing the media you watch it's really good and complementary with what I been going through.
Honestly re watches are a must when you have bad memory or when you need inspiration or need to analyze something( to get better at wiritting or maybe for a school Project ), but doing it too much can indeed make the experience less than it was
I think if you wanna look at your phone during a movie, it's neither good nor bad enough to engage with the human part of your brain that wants to know why it's good or bad.
Doesn't matter what you do, as long as you make the choice to do it. You can be lazy without being on constant autopilot. This is also a very good way to mitigate ADHD symptoms for the days where your brain feels like it's at 2% capacity, very cool video thank you.
this is a great add-on because as easy as it may sound to someone without adhd, sometimes I can't just sit and watch a whole movie or series. Understimulation is a real thing. I also sometimes can't just watch a new show or movie because overstimulation is also a real thing. One option may be better for me than the other depending on what set of symptoms my brain is presenting me that day (or hour or minute). Making an active choice on what I'm consuming and how I'm consuming it and being fully aware of that choice is the most important part.
@@nbucwa6621 man the general specimen has shifted since the golden era. I guess if the movie had a little hand that came out and jacked you off it would reach the stimulating needs of some of our fighting new generations.
watching this made me realize why i'm in a stump right now. i have a friend who, albeit doesn't really know what the hell i'm writing about, gives GREAT ideas, and whenever i talk to her about my works she always has something to suggest which makes the pieces link together better. back then i never talked to others about my works because i was embarrassed but now i realized that i'm not the type who can productively work alone. great video man 👍
You’re the first TH-camr I’ve ever seen that I feel is so similar to me. I also fall into media traps but I also like to watch cinema, and in order to write my novel I started to read Frankenstein as a productive piece of investigation. I’m stuck at home without a job or school (3 month gap period) and I have nobody to talk to about writing. Your videos are almost therapeutic to learn that what I’m doing is a struggle, and a step in the right direction. Thank yoi
I agree that I feel like I get more out of these videos than just writing advice. I feel inspired and that I'm being spoken to as a writer instead of a novice, not being patronised. They're very on my wavelength and make me feel creative and inspired.
"Don't wait for consumption choices to inspire your project. Allow your project to inspire your consumption choices." And this is exactly why I decided to sit down and start properly reading A Song of Ice and Fire and rewatch certain Sopranos episodes. But in more important news, this is damn valuable advice.
I'm working on a project surrounding the Korean war. Because of this I decided that I would consume and engage with media that are also on that topic. Documentaries, mostly, but also MASH, and other fictional interpretations. Letting the work inspire the media is genius and thats how I allow my relaxation/refuel time feed my productivity on projects :)
I used to be addicted to watching TV as a kid. In My 20's when I was going to school and trying to get ahead I noticed I would turn on the TV first thing when I got home. I unplugged it and was good for a very long time. Some where in 2013 or 2014 I got addicted to TH-cam and now I'm back to suare one.
I used to be a pantser, 100%, when i was a kid writing stories. Then later, i started planning things out more and more, leading to nothing ever getting done because i needed to be "finished" with my worldbuilding before i ever put anything to page beyond an outline. I think nowadays im trying to lean more into the pantser side of things for my actual scene writing (fixing mistakes via revision on a smaller scale), while remaining more of an architect with the worldbuilding and outlines, because thats where mistakes and inconsistenci3s matter much more. Still in the learning process, or relearning i suppose, but its going well! Who knows, i may actually have my first finished script by the end of the summer lol
A few years ago i had a tightly plotted, designed and worldbuilt magnum opus comic. I have 10 or so WIPs of pages. My silly little fancomic i make based purely on vibes howevever, is about to break 100 pages. Pantsing lets me ride the excitement of ideas as they happen, bypasses the "im a hack oh god" stage because im done by the time its happening, and gives me a place to force interesting twists "in the edit" as i construct the timeline and plot. Plus, people seem to like my self indulgent bs for some reason. I wouldnt nessesarily recommend it, but its working for me in the space I'm in right now. Editing a screenplay or novel into submission is also probably easier than figuring out how to place completed 5-15 page sets on a timeline, too.
As an extreme pantser (really tried the planner method for a while but found I did my best work winging it), I feel like none of the stated reasons really get at the heart of why it works for me. Which is fair as I didn't discover this until recently. Basically, I need to be in the story to know how the story goes. I need to experience the plot with the characters for it to come alive. I'm not able to get proper emotion and understanding just looking at a plot or a character outline and so my additions feel forced and lifeless. Recently I've tried to get back into planning after having spent two years now in full pantser mode and it's tough. Legitimately facing block because I don't know what should come next (well, I know, but again it feels lifeless), but the stories I pants are flowing smoothly and I'm right where I need to be. When I throw caution to the wind and just write, suddenly the world is alive. Suddenly the characters have wants and needs and they want to go in different directions, and I follow them all throughout like a dedicated cameraman. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's frustrating, often it takes long (2nd draft becomes the clean up draft). Sometimes the plot is pretty much whole inside my head, I'm just getting it down on paper. And sometimes I don't know where the fuck I'm going, I'm literally making up brand new characters on the spot and bullshitting. I suspect there are a lot less pantsers in the community than one would be led to believe. Something about the stupid belief that true writers are artsy and intuitive + not wanting to put in the work to learn story structure. Which is bizarre because I'd say knowing structure is doubly important when you pants. You gotta memorize that shit.
5:25, I bought an awesome used Samsung Note on ebay, and I love it for doodling and if I make a point to not get distracted, then I don't BUT I've recently realized that nothing beats a physical notebook. The tactile nature literally grounds you. I theorize the modern human NEEDS more physical & tactile experiences than we are getting on average, including working with physical paper. I can spend 8 hours a day working with excel sheets and text editing for my job, and I've realized there's a certain frustration to constantly manipulating things you can't touch. A discomfort that I've suppressed for who knows how long, but I can't do anything about. As nice as Ctrl-Z is, having physical access to your work is nicer. It's just mentally grounding and more peaceful. I've been feeling the same way as an artist. I started out with 90% digital art, but I've moved to 90% traditional art. Not having undo is such a blessing, my problem solving skills are so much sharper and I think harder. I can't thank our AI overlords enough for encouraging me to make the switch!
As someone who, for various reasons, was forced into going phoneless recently, it lead to the most healing, inspiring, exciting week. I watched movies and read books without the ability to scroll. I drove without access to maps, and learned more about my town as a result. It's a lot harder when your phone is handy, but turning it off, leaving it in a room, convincing yourself that you'll miss NOTHING - calls, emails, posts - that can't be caught up on later, is something you won't regret.
Architect gone a bit gardener here. For me, it’s about the ability to trust yourself enough to experiment and go off outline if something new (and maybe even better) surprises you while you’re writing, and then to know for a fact that you’ll be able to go back and either edit what came before to make the new path work, or go back and try again if the new path ultimately didn’t work. Editing is everything. The better I’ve become at editing, the better my work has become overall, which allows me to loose that anxious grip a bit on mapping out every little thing before I even start writing what I pray will be a perfect first draft. It’s not going to be. No matter how much planning I do, I’m going to have to fix things that seemed fine in my outline, until I got to that specific scene in the draft where the rhythm or chemistry or motivation was off in some way I genuinely could not have seen until it was there on the page in front of my face. And I get that this vid is about efficiency, but I think even though (or maybe even especially because) the industry is how it is, we should be pushing back against the cult of efficiency, stop moralizing productivity, and insist that great stories often take time to tell.
Do you want to be *hyper efficient marketing dude who's very good in problem solving* to my *scatter brained dude overflowing with what ifs and wouldnt it be cools* ? We could help each other maybe!
Me: "why can't I come up with any interesting ideas!" Also me: watches Psych, Monk, and the Mentalist on a loop, with little to no variation. Maybe something needs to change.
I am an intense architect that tracks a lot of details throughout my narratives, but I've found that sitting down and gardening with it, finally writing it out, can both reaffirm that the planning is close to airtight and generate surprises that make the process feel less scripted even though its been planned. When I first got into writing, I was a gardener until I saw the power of planning. It's really about finding balance in different periods of your life and recognizing how much time you can devote to projects at any given time: gardening supplies immediate rewards and a renewed inspiration in your current project while planning meticulously crafts a sturdy foundation that you can rely on for a long time.
Not with creative projects specifically, but I used to be a fully "live by the vibe"/"feel my way through problems" kind of person. I haven't converted to needing to plan everything, but after a lifetime of depression and a stint at the hospital, something clicked into place and I feel like I found the yin to that yang. As an example, I had played guitar for years, and half written a dozen songs, but never really saw anything through to the end. Within a year of the hospital, I had written and fully produced a full song, and written another. They aren't amazing works of art, but they feel *very* expressive of who I was, and I think I'll always be proud of myself for that much. I think I need the 'gardening' in order to speak truth to me, and what I want to say. But the 'planner' part was also needed, to give me some structure to operate within. It kind of removed writer's block, before it would even happen. More than anything, I think the 'planner' part also helped me focus on what was actually important about what I was working on. If I felt really strongly about adding or removing a line, I just did it. But those times I wasn't sure, when it was close~ish to 50/50, it became very easy to look to my plan to help sway me one way or the other. "Yes this line is funny, but the point of this section is really the wordplay, so I'll ditch it."
Pantser here: every time I try to plan (believe me, I've tried) it does not work for me at all. I write this uninspired, basic, boring as crap outline that makes me want to throw it away and never think about the story again. In order to learn about the characters, I have to spend time with them in the context of the story. This leads to A LOT of rewrites (the current story I'm working on is the fourth completely rewritten draft) but I personally enjoy that a lot more because they end up feeling developed and like real people. If you're a writer who can just whip up a fully-fledged human being out of thin air and know exactly how they'd act/react in every single situation, that's awesome. But I can't do that, and I'm okay with it. The fun for me is in the journey.
I think about Architect vs Gardener this way: George RR Martin is a Gardener and he's written probably the best fantasy series since Lord of the Rings. He's also written himself into a corner so tight that he's spent more that a decade untangling it, and he's so fed up with it that he doesn't want to finish the thing any more and turned his legacy over to a couple of hacks. All that to end up with an incomplete work that's comparable, but still inferior to, Tolkien who was maybe the most extreme example of an Architect. Lord of Rings is so dense that there are university degrees solely devoted to it's study. If you've ever seen someone described as a Tolkien scholar that's not a joke, they went to college for that. He had hundreds of years of history, an entire cosmology and multiple complete languages before writing a single word of Fellowship. He's written a classic that will endure for centuries. I can't tell you the number of times people have commented that they forgot Game of Thrones even existed after the show ended.
Every word of that on GRRM is a hot take from a frustrated soul. A show and a movie are different things. The show exploded his readership and consequential literary legacy for generations. As you said, the show is being forgotten. That statement right there makes me wonder why you mention it at all? The books are his baby, and the show has given him a massive readership. Or you can only see through the scriptwriter’s lenses… in which case, I wonder why you mention the _book author_ at all? Do _you_ even know what you are about?
Idk who needs to hear this, but... You ain't gonna tolkien your way to a happy and productive life. You can't worldbuild your colossal, monumental, way over-detailed setting for a decade where the vast majority of stuff in the setting is in no way applicable to your cast of incredibly by-the-books barebones characters and their arcs and then have gratification and livability fall into your lap for your "generous" contribution to society. Neither would tolkien approve of doing so. Lotr isn't the standard. It was a vast cosmological fluke.
I moved into my own place recently and have an actual work room now and I can say for sure fact I have been more productive than I had been in the past 3 years because of it on all accounts. I only work in my bedroom now if I'm having an actual physical issue that requires me to sit with my legs fully outstretched rather than bent at the knees.
I have put off experiencing most entertainment so that my work isn't influenced by other pieces of work. Becoming influenced by the work of others is something I'm trying to steer clear of so that the experience is as fresh as a person can manage. If I were to take your advice, I would directly feed into the kind of thing I'm trying to avoid completely.
Great take here. ADHD gang checking in lol. I barely use social media because I find that it kills any creativity and just turns my brain to sludge and kills my self-confidence. I would much rather play a video game with an intriguing story or play Dungeons and Dragons or watch a movie or read a book. Literally anything is better than TikTok and self-hatred and downward spiraling and doomscrolling. I even prioritize my TH-cam consumption around stuff I find intellectually intriguing, ALA your channel. And when it comes to the media I consume I don't always prioritize consuming media that will directly inspire my work, but I do try to keep my work in mind and when I *do* consume media that happens to relate, I can apply it. As far as Gardener vs Plotter, I am a gardener but I have made myself a plotter for my novel. Because I can come up with a great prompt and write a few great chapters on that inspiration, but I will never write a full length novel just going off the cuff like that. I NEED to plan out the major points of the story until the end or else I will never reach it. I don't need to plan out every individual scene but I need a rock-solid idea of where my story starts and the major beats that are going to take place and where it ends. I need to have an end goal at least in mind, even if it turns out different than expected. Edit: ALSO CONGRATs on 125k subs!!
I’m an architect trying to learn gardening as an additional tool. I really like the planning part of writing have always naturally gravitated towards it but over time, a disability of mine that includes things like brain fog, memory issues, fatigue and chronic pain has slowly gotten worse so I only have a limited amount of energy I can really spend sitting and doing something. Initially I tried to work past it but it was like trying to form ideas out of nothing (or like trying to lay those tracks on thin air). So instead I’ve started keeping a notebook around me at all times so when an idea comes I can write it down and revise what I’m working on in the moment. Then once I have a basic understanding of the themes, plot, characters and relationships between them all I go back to the planner stage and work from what I have to solidify it all and plan out the basics of scenes (not the exactly outlines so I don’t overwhelm or exhaust myself with too many things to keep in mind while writing the draft; more I keep a general idea of where the characters are + thematic parallels with ideas of specific, possibly important lines to remember) and then I go on and actually start writing the story itself, sometimes revising the plan if something feels better one once actually wholly written.
Do you want to be *hyper efficient marketing dude who's very good in problem solving* to my *scatter brained dude overflowing with what ifs and wouldnt it be cools* ? We could help each other maybe!
To give some thoughts as a natural architect turned (mostly) gardener: As you made reference to, there’s a realness my writing never reached until I let my characters experience the scenes freely. To be more specific, I think it comes down to capturing the natural flow of dialogue and character thoughts, enabling strong clear personalities to come through in character voices, and keeping readers on the edge of their seats beat-to-beat -- meaning not huge unexpected twists and turns, but within scenes having all these little moments of microstakes where you’re left honestly curious about how a character is going to react, or what they’re going to say next, or where a beat is leading us. As far as your “Have I extracted all the inspiration I can from this?” question, I hear the sentiment. But I also think if it’s a piece of storytelling you truly love, there’s always more to learn. If you’re not yet capable of reproducing that aspect of what you love in your own stories -- maybe that means you’re just stuck and you need to work harder and gain more experience etc. But that could also be a sign to go back to what first inspired you, even if you’ve already gone back dozens of times, and rewatch and rethink and relearn everything until you’ve leveled up your understanding of that favorite story of yours. I find there’s no end to what I can learn from my favorite stories, and the more I work to improve my craft, those shifts in perspective allow me to find new lessons hiding in places I never thought to look every time I come back. (I don’t think you’re necessarily disagreeing with this btw, just thought it was an important point to highlight. I also don’t know if you’d call this going back for “inspiration” per se or if learning is a different category.) The other reason I think people find it valuable to retreat to old favorites for inspiration might be gardener-specific. Favorite stories often have some indefinable feel to their dialogue, a flavor to their big emotional moments, a mood, a tone, etc. Grounding yourself subconsciously in the fuzziest but also most pivotal features of your favorite stories can be an irreplaceable type of foundation to perform a day’s gardening work. Granted, it can also be a deluded, unthought-out, overly hopeful “maybe the good writing will rub off on me”-type daydream. Gotta be honest about whether it’s actually helping you, or whether you’re in denial about harboring some superstitious osmosis-like idea of how to improve at writing. But many times I’ve gone back and watched, for example, particular One Piece scenes to just knock myself back into the headspace of “whatever ideas I come up with today, this is the benchmark for what I want them to feel like”. Another place where it sounds like we differ is writing environment. (Although I prefer Starbucks to Panera) I agree it’s very helpful to have a dedicated work place, but I would say I still end up doing about 10% of my creative work (and probably a good 40% of my best creative work) sitting in bed at like 4am. There’s a Ray Bradbury quote about how creativity is like a stray cat following you home: if you turn around and try to catch it, it will run away; if you ignore it completely, it will lose interest and wander off; but if you pretend not to see it and then glance over your shoulder every so often, it will happily follow you home. By far, the most guaranteed way of getting out of writer’s block for me is giving up. I slam my laptop shut in frustration, vow to start working on a new project tomorrow, turn off my light, try to go to sleep -- and THAT’s when my mind frees up completely and all the best ideas and solutions come. Tricking myself into thinking I’m not in work mode, going to my non-work place, and then letting myself “truly” get to work has been a vital part of my routine. (Again, I don’t know if you’d necessarily disagree with this.) Last thing I wanted to comment on: “You have nothing but your instincts, and most people, myself included, don’t have powerful enough instincts.” Same. But also, this feels like short-term advice. If your goal is to become a good solid writer in the next 5 years, you have way more control over your conscious mind’s part in creativity (planning) than your unconscious mind’s (instincts). But instincts are also trainable, and if your goal is to become a GREAT writer in the next 20 years, both roads are equally viable imo. The hesitance you mentioned of gardeners to spoil the honesty if their writing with layers of inorganic analytical planning is sometimes misplaced. But so many of the greatest lines and moments and characters come from unplanned bursts of instinct-based creativity that I totally understand prioritizing the development of instincts over conscious creative strategy, even if it may be a more ambitious and more difficult road. Great vid! Nice to peek back into the planner's world every once in a while.
Thanks man - totally see where you’re coming from. This sort of discussion really speaks to how insanely different writers’ brains can be. It’s like a sport where everybody is allowed to play by completely different rules
i've learned my lesson about planning ahead the painful way. the only times when i actually go with the flow is for very short projects, and even then, a small outline can help sooo much.
I do agreement. Over the past 2 years I have built out a world and the story I want to tell within it. I even found a good creative partner in one of my long-time friends. I personally have found the gardening to be enjoyable for small excerpts and short stories within the world/story, and as I write what's cool or makes sense at the time I start to have questions about how it would/could or couldn't fit within the rules I have set up. To further your analogy, gardening is when you want to see something grow, you don't know what it will grow into or when it will die, or even if it'll be the same as when it started, its pretty to look at and sometimes the joy is even in watching how it unfolds. creating a blueprint for a building almost always has a purpose or need in mind, but especially an end. The biggest difference to me is that Finality behind a pre-planned and built thing vs the organic growth and cultivation of thing. Gardening is when you want to see how far you can go, how long something can last, how big or how deep it can go by just exploring the unknown without ever looking behind you to see how you got there. Its two different types of media. Family guy, or the MCU are both examples of how far can we make something go, while any show that has a clear definitive end with a clear well-defined message is something that was built with that message in mind.
I don’t have time to watch this video yet but local is the only channel with notifications that show up when the video is posted and I want my comment to have a little liked by creator thing for internet validation
I think i would call myself a gardener? I try to plan, and for some projects it does work alright. However I find myself overwhelmed by the possibilities? I guess? In elementary school I used to hate writing rough drafts of things and then completely rewriting them later. I think its just how my brain functions, I hate planning things super far ahead. While acting I love improv more than anything. I also do freerunning parkour which consists entirely of making split second decisions possibly for life and death. However, youll still look at a route and plan it 10 seconds in advance. While improving, you still have ideas that youll work torwards. There is always a solid idea of how the story will go that is hard to put on paper. Its almost like writing it down concretes it into existence, and id rather have the chunks of planned story in my brain that i eventually fit together on the spot to make a story. And then i can go back to any spot and modify it to make it fit this theme better, or maybe swap these two scenes for better pacing etc etc. In the end it all boils down to: I plan in my head, then fit it together like legos while im writing.
Since I only have one room and do everything in that room, I tend to listen to specific music when working on my project and only then. Instead of designating areas you could use other things to activate the right mindset. A designated room, a certain time of day, specific music, there are a lot of ways to do this but the core principle of setting up some pavlovian trigger to go into creative mode seems totally indispensable to me.
I only have one room too, and I have a "thinking lamp" that's just a small lava lamp. I turn on the lava lamp and another bright desk lamp, and turn off my main light so the rest of my room is dim and my desk is bright with an eye catching lava lamp that softens shadows and has a pleasing warmth. I later found out that the University of Hawaii did a study and asked students (who mostly all lived in dorms and all had a desk lamp) to turn that desk lamp on ONLY when they were studying and to turn it off when they were done, and the students that did this started studying way better. Another thing one-roomers should be doing is making their bed. It's hard for me because of my cat, but I've been better about this. My sleep cue is a box fan I put in the doorway. I sleep so much harder with that airflow, but I recently realized when I turn it off-- it feels like my day is starting. Almost like "boxfan room" and "daytime room" are two different places.
I do agreement, I do. My approach to productivity recently is... not thinking about productivity. At least, not in the way I have in the past. Previously, I've viewed productivity as an inside -> out process: enacting my will/discipline (inside) on the world around me (out). Flipping this has been incredibly helpful. Instead of prioritizing how I interact with the world, be mindful of the outside -> in: what am I letting influence my internal and creative process? To my dismay, 700 episode anime rewatches, youtube binging, and general social media debauchery do not build the ideal environment for maintaining my mental health, and my mental health-contrary to every popular portrayal of artists, ever-seems rather important if I'm interested in doing... anything, art included. Great video! Maybe I'll watch again later while simultaneously browsing my phone and snacking and discording (guilt, guilt, guilt) and such.
@5:00 Okay, true, but also I'm homeless living out of my friends living room, so multiple rooms aren't exactly an option... I do go to a starbucks for that same reason though.
For me, the biggest appeal of writing and just consuming stories comes from the idea that it's the one place where "anything is possible" is not wrong, and you can actually pull off anything in your story with a good enough execution, just some are harder to make work than others. The goal to start writing has pretty much spawned out of wanting to see some really fun ideas i've had in my head come to life, and getting tired of waiting for the near-impossible chance it not only happens, but is done well. For a while though, I got discouraged because of thinking that by doing all the hard work of writing up that story, i'll rob myself of enjoying it personally and leaving that only (hopefuly) for the rest. A big help with getting through that was to approach writing more as a game or challange, where you think up literally any idea, and do your best to find out how to make it work, research all the stuff that may help you with it and gain inspiration from other works that may be similar to it. It's not easy, but it is an enjoyable challange.
There's no such thing as a wasted draft if you're still learning how to write/tell stories. If you currently lack the skills to put your ideas on paper, it matters a lot less what the ideas are and lot more how much time you spend practicing. Not that you can't practice outlining while also practicing putting narrative on a page, but if you already have outlining skills spending a lengthy amount of time putting together the perfect outline for a story you don't have a prayer of telling might not be the most efficient way to spend your time. If a writer hasn't before, I highly recommend getting one complete draft of something finished. Even if the result is garbage you want to burn, you now have a better idea of what telling a full story requires than you could of before, and everything else you write will benefit from that knowledge.
I'm a natural architect who has found the value of gardening. I spent about five years developing the history of my fantasy world. I was reading and watching everything I could about writing, and putting it into practice within my world's history. I developed a LOT, and eventually I got to the point where I had planned so much Contextual info that when I made the jump to writing short stories; and later novels; set in my world, I found I barely had to plan at all. The stories flowed naturally and realistically Because I had done so much work beforehand. I had maybe a rough Rough outline of the first novel, just historical bullet points, but even those points I had to let go of because the character's story was flowing so naturally. I really felt like my conscious mind had to "not get involved" and release control. Now, in the fourth draft, I am curating it with all the intention that I can. There IS a lot of back writing to do, but I only found my main character's personal journey AFTER the first draft was done. I saw the story that had flowed out and realized... ok, this story is about powerlessness in the face of trauma. I had NO idea that was the story based off of my bullet points. Second draft then I was able to tweak every scene to just sharpen those intentions in each moment and movement. I've kept pretty much every scene in my first draft, I've just primarily re-written dialog and adjusted the exposition ratio. Now I feel like I'm just not writing if it isn't the gardening method. I think, for me, it just needs to be bookended by planning. That being said... book TWO in the series, which I haven't begun writing yet, has a Very in depth outline and I have planned nearly every scene, so we'll see how that goes. I see tremendous value in both ways of thinking.
Would you consider doing a video on how you would balance a "9 to 5" with creating art and trying to be a healthy person who still goes outside, exercises an socializes?
“Allow your project to inspire [what you watch, read, etc]” This! I had figured this one out myself some time ago but can’t agree more. Sometimes I’ll deliberately watch or read a thing that’s in the same genre/mood/etc as what I’m working on. Granted sometimes it is something I’ve seen before, but if so it’s done deliberately because it has themes/characters/etc I want to revisit.
Ironically enough Ive started work on a scriptwriting project in order to be more productive, and that task has led me to consuming your videos. It doesnt feel like passive entertainment, it feels like im actually learning something thats getting me closer to the goal. thanks man
I find that in the moment of conceiving an idea, I fall in love with it and have the same drive and passion a gardener would. Although, I understand my own ambition and am an extremely detail oriented person-in that sense, I am an architect: I want to make sure every corner and crevice is top-notch. It is a gruelling and lengthy process, but I do enjoy the technicality. Also, it's nice to see someone so outwardly spoken on their process as I can relate it to my own! It feels less... lonesome.
Thank god I've always hated the concept of TikToks and Shorts. I just don't get how people can play a game or watch a movie while scrolling stuff at the same time.
I'm a natural architect who can indulge in gardening every now and then. In practice I benefit from cycling between them. What ends up happening is that I sit down to write a manuscript informed by my very careful outline (plot, boom, third rail, boom), and during the writing stage I realize that there were emotional or plot holes I didn't account for, or Cooler and Better ways to execute the outline so it's not as formulaic or restrictive. Generally I can caulk over the holes with improvised characterization or troubleshooting in real time as I write. It's faster than if I were to try to interrogate *where* those holes where in the architecture stage. I would never have found them unless I spent an absurd amount of time ruminating until it's watertight. It's like learning on the job. Diving in head-first and figuring stuff out as I go. I would say I implement 75% Plotting to 25% Pantsing. The Pantsing portion is where the personality and magic comes out, but the Plotting portion is integral to making sure I don't write a novel of just VIBES and that there's themes and Everything Means Something.
Do you want to be *hyper efficient marketing dude who's very good in problem solving* to my *scatter brained dude overflowing with what ifs and wouldnt it be cools* ? We could help each other maybe!
I'm more of a gardener myself, but it's not because I'm ideologically opposed to planning. I think of the planning as an organic, rather than mechanic, process, of "growing" a story, not "building" one. You need to plant the seed and water it to get the plant, but nature also does that on its own. Sometimes, you just harvest stuff you found in the woods. At the end of the day, what matters is that there is a garden in the garden. Or a story on the page. But I wouldn't be here if I didn't get anything from it. Love your work x
"what if" and "wouldn't it be cool if" is so much of my notes and idea process. Just the other night I was out to dinner with a friend discussing a story and spontaneously figured out the magic system for the story, along with some details that plugged a plot hole.
As an artist and a writer, I feel it’s best to get the big things down like you said. I make sure to get the big ideas/scenes down, get to the core of my characters and then I put in the details. Like with drawing, I put the circles and lines down of the sketch first to guide me then I develop it from there. I’ll make adjustments here and there if the idea strikes but after a certain point you can’t change the whole thing. You can change a position of a limb or placement of an object but you can’t just turn the whole drawing on its head unless you want to start over. Same with writing. I got the base then I just let the rest come to me. I’ve even found that at school during PE, I’ll just walk and listen to music. This hour of just being in my own mind every day has given me so many good ideas and a lot of time to brainstorm. You have to figure out what amount of planning and just bullshitting it takes for your work to come out as you’d like it. Some people figure it out early on, some take years. But this is just how I do it.
I hate movie theaters tbh. i can never focus on the film. People are always making noises, eating, drinking. Big TV + AirPods Max are the way to go for me. I love movies and since im not feeling guilty anymore for f*ing over the Box office numbers.. i feel complete while watching movies exclusively at home in total silence.. 🙂
this channel is like a free masterclass. there's so much helpful information here that is just available for anyone to absorb. thank you for making this channel to help people like me learn how to make things :D
I appreciate the Pipes Screensaver being the background of this video, perfect visual metaphor between boundless creativity and strict rules for being creative in that way.
That is a really, REALLY good point about the bedroom. And it describes my bedroom 100%. Even the damn minifridge that I never use (it’s practically a microfridge)
As an artist/writer/Dungeon Master/full time utility worker, there’s a reason I’ve only rewatched my favorite show *once.* Running fun DnD trains the “pantser” part of your brain. It’s tough at first. It helps that I did a LOT of pantsing as a kid and teen, mostly with fanfiction. That led to my mentor. He was already published, and just keeps knocking out projects after becoming a dad/game creator/polyglot/teacher of teens and other schoolteachers. Thing is… He started as a gardener. Now he’s half-gardener, half-pantser. He just goes with it and makes shit up with the flow sometimes, because he focuses on efficient thinking and efficient time management. In the process, he’s taught me a bunch about gardening (both literally and metaphorically).
Yes! I love finding media that will support my creative project, or make me question somethings I'm doing with it. Sometimes I get really lucky and find, movies, or documentaries, or youtube vids at the right time to help me. I've never been someone who can put on something in the background or having a comfort show that I watch multiple times. Definitely not a judgement call, the world is hard and time is short if a person does something to relax, and it doesn't hurt them or others, go for it. My brain doesn't work that way though. Architect vs gardener, speaking of brains how they work... I consider myself somewhere in between, but more loose-y-goose-y than most architects. I have a garden with architecture in it. I have a entry (inciting incident) and steps along the garden, like a step-stone path that are scenes or key points in the plot. I have certain shapes of beds (reoccuring things that pop in my stories) people matter and have worth, male and female friendships, ect. Tropes that I like or general concepts make up a lot of the flowers or ground cover. I have tried to outline. I've tried a scene by scene outline, and looser less detailed ones, but it's like it shuts off my motivation to get the words out. I shut down on the story before I start. In the case of a detailed outline I rarely finish the outline itself. I can't explain why this might be, I actually find myself yearning for structure 8 times out of 10 in my life, so it's not a distaste for that. My brain might have some peculiarities, I was extremely premature and had a brain bleed, perhaps multiple, I have a diagnosis for a general learning disability and ocd. I got a college degree through sheer force of will because I like to fight nebulous institutions lol. All that doesn't matter though, honestly although I've been writing since I was 8 and I'm 37 now, I'm still figuring out what processes work for me. ^_^;; As always thanks for the food for thought Lucas! Hayley ^_^
I'm a natural architect. Writing outlines and meticulously planning everything in the story is the most fun part of the writing process for me. I really don't see the perspective of "you can't have an impactful or surprising story if you outline it hard beforehand" or "structuring it all out sucks the soul from the story". I don't think it's true at all! BUT. Over the years that I've been writing, I HAVE had to see the benefit of the gardening approach. The projects I have the most passion for are all long-form. I start out the outlines, and sometimes I even finish them, but almost every single time, I've burnt out and not finished them. Not ABANDONED them, just let them sit in my WIP folder and collect dust until I remember them months/years later. But all the projects I've ever actually sent out and published were short-form things I just... sat down and wrote in 1-3 sessions. I'm not as enthusiastic about them as my long-form stuff, but I FINISHED them! And I've become a better writer because I was ACTUALLY WRITING SOMETHING! I guess what I'm trying to say is that sometimes you literally just... have to write. Sit down and just write. You can't be your best if you're caught up entirely on planning, and you can't be your best if you just go in blind and mess around without thought. You gotta find a good balance. Which is obvious, probably didn't need to be said, but whatever.
Do you want to be *hyper efficient marketing dude who's very good in problem solving* to my *scatter brained dude overflowing with what ifs and wouldnt it be cools* ? We could help each other maybe!
I’ve had similar revelations about committing to a piece of media and being selective about inspirations before, but it’s good to have it again in video form. Hell, I saw an article advocating for the same when consuming music just last week, keeping hold of or discovering the joys of tangibly owning music rather than streaming it. I also like the uninterrupted completeness of the cinema / movie theatre experience, as you mentioned, and reasonably recreating that when I want to watch a film (even at home). I’ve personally refused to binge shows now, taking my time with episodes and relishing in that digestible once-a-week experience the way we used to take them in. Letting things breathe, and choosing to slow down, has actually helped a lot. Thanks for this, and carry on with the good work.
The physicality is very important. I started to truly take writing seriously was when I bought a faux-leather notebook that I took with me everywhere for expressly one purpose - soon as I have an idea, I pull it out and write it down. Good idea, bad idea, doesn't matter. Write it down, make it REAL. Now it's no longer bouncing around in your head - now it's a physical proof of it, and you can actually go about working with it. I put no other pressures on me at that time. No daily word goals, no challenges - just this one thing. Write physical notes and put down the date you did them on. That's it. And it took a while before it became something I did naturally. The first entries were spaced out at days, sometimes weeks. Sometimes even months! What this practice showed me was that first off, I had to truly own the idea that I want to write. Some random notepad files or word documents lost in my PC hard drive don't work. Physical notes work, because I can reach out and grab that notebook even right now and check it. Second, it shows that ideas aren't precious. They're kinda mundane and boring, and on their own don't actually do a lot. That notebook is full of discarded ideas or ideas I have worked on for so long that it's hard to recognize them. But that's the thing - that's the third, most important part. This notebook is a piece of evidence, an empiric fact that writing takes time, that it requires going through lots of ideas, scrapping many of them, and keeping working. This notebook is an artefact, the start of the journey, and though the last entry in it was from 2020, it's in my arm's reach always. It's what helped me outline, draft and write not just a novel, but an entire universe that I am now working on daily simply because that's just what I do now. It is no longer something I need to consciously think about doing, I just do it because I've done it for years. I have different mode of physicality to my writing, now. My wall is filled with sticky notes of small ideas, small things for the setting I've not bothered to codify. And while I do have the issue of one room fulfilling most purposes, as soon as I write on that conspiracy-lunatic style sticky note wall, I remember - yeah, that's the work I'm doing every day. These are the tiny crystallized ideas that contribute to that greater whole. And sometimes I take some down, replace them with better ones. The sticky note is only so big, I can fit in only so much text - so for the idea to remain on the now crowded wall, it has to be worth it.
I find I do a kind of one-two approach to gardening and planning: I start out writing a few disjointed scenes and running through scenes in my head and once I've got the characters and the themes solidified in my head, then I move on to creating an outline as thoroughly as possible and from there, create a first draft.
Just wanted to say your content has really inspired me and given me the tools to get working on a novel I’d been dreaming about writing for years. Thanks so much for your amazing work
Extremely good description of Pantsers VS Plotters. Every time I see someone saying plotting kills creativity, I wonder why they believe I am not creative while I am plotting the story. Or why they believe that once the outline is done, it is written in stone.
Ray Bradbury, in his 2001 speech(An Evening with Ray Bradbury), which anyone can still watch (it's pretty funny and filled with gems of wisdom), talks about writers reading 1 short story per night, reading a classic piece of poetry, and writing a short essay., and 1 short story a week. Of course, for screenwriters, this is slightly different because the medium is different. But I think what Bradbury was getting at, at least in my own subjective take, is that no artist is an island, and that consumption of the arts is part of an artist's job to enrich their storehouse of influences and possible inspirations. (listen to Tarantino and Scorsese talk about films. Those guys watched a lot!) Watching a movie or reading a story daily for a writer and screenwriter is different than just someone trying to be entertained. In my opinion, it's just part of the process of becoming a better artist. Part of the job. How can an artist become better without studying the works of others?
I'm not even a gardener, I'm an architect, but I can tell you that I do feel the restriction that gardeners do. It's more like, I have an idea that's too broad with not enough detail, but I can't magically create scenes out of wholecloth to summarize. Idea: I want my character to, somehow, be executed for her revolutionary actions because of (x earlier themes) Great! Love it! How does that come to pass? I'm someone who is very critical of media but all of my favorites are explicitly books and movies that make me EMOTIONAL. I don't really cry about events in stories or even like most romances at all, but I love the stuff that can induce those reactions. It's really hard to feel emotional about a character's choices or relationships when you're outlining and since I want to inspire emotion in others, some things have to be really spontaneous. If I'm not emotional, why would my reader be? That's extremely specific though, I would really discourage a lot of people from favoring emotion in their writing. It kind of flips my statement on its head, "just because you're emotional doesn't mean your reader will be." All of that stuff is propped up with the fact that I do outline, I will cut scenes mercilessly, and I do critique what I have written. A lot of my desire to write emotionally is a desire to be challenged. Side note, I almost never rewatch anything but this video is finally rescuing me from watching season 1-8 of the Simpsons for the fourth time IN A ROW. Ay carumba.
OMG YOUVE JUST GIVEN ME VALIDATION FOR EVERYTHING IVE STARTED DOING IN MY LAST 2 YEARS so that I can lead a life that I can be proud and hopeful of. Id like to note, that half of my friends look at me like "What the hell". They cringe and judge me for, for example uninstalling youtube on my phone, because thats just my music and communication device. And my father preaches, that I should stop using my analog notebooks and calendars, because its cheaper and more efficient. I ended up thinking, that oooOOOoooooOoOoo IM SPECIAL. I thought that the way I achieved good progress is entirely subjective to myself, but maybe I should start imposing your lessons onto the people I care for, whenever they start complaining about their life again, because I firmly believe in what you said.
I plan to write a graphic novel, and I'm trying to find that balance between knowing enough of how everything will act out from start to finish to be able to write it without problem, but still giving every character and scene enough of a chance to drive the story in their own direction in the case that may end up working better. Productivity is a huge struggle for me for a lot of the reasons you mentioned. I always work in the privacy and comfort of my house because I have adhd so a lot of my brainstorming pretty much requires running around and pacing as a stim, and that's something I can't really get away with in a public Panera. I can't just sit still surrounded by millions of people or my mind will completely freeze up. I want to keep my phone around too just in case of emergencies. I'll see if I can find a balance between phoneless public Panera and all the distractions of a home.
Speaking as someone who isn’t just a writer your advice of changing your consumption to match your product is great. I also do game development and a project I’m working on is a survival game so I played survival games to see how they handle certain mechanics.
Funny, the thought of transforming my media consumption (at least partially) into an opportunity to learn and improve is what brought me here in the first place
I really want to say that you've opened my eyes so much ever since I discovered your channel. I am a big time procrastinator and I could never motivate myself out of this endless loop of lazing around consuming things instead of creating them like I've always wanted to. I love media and I can't deny that one of the best memories I have had in my life is from consuming media. Eventually, I want to get out of comfort zone and do cool shit. I will continue trying even if I have to keep failing. Thank you again.
Planning is essence of storytelling, you need the understanding of how to fit and balance all elements together. Make a blueprint before starting to build.
One of the reasons I'm not a gardener is that I like being able to essentially bottle up my inspiration for later. The major problem with gardening/ pantsing is that you're relying on inspiration day-to-day to carry you through. But when I work on an outline for a book, I think to myself "Aha! An idea for later!" and I add it to the outline. In a single inspired day, I can plan, plan, plan, with ideas flying at me left and right. Then, on other days, I can take things easy and actually write what I came up with before. Whereas if I'd been a gardener, I would have one inspired writing session and then....a desert of un-inspiration. In other words, developing an outline can help counter the effects of writer's block. When you develop an outline, you don't suffer nearly as much.
![ลองสุ่มไอโฟน 990 โกงมั้ย? [ โกงมั้ยครับ ep.101 ] | DOM](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/bfsWe0j492k/mqdefault.jpg)
I just have to say that your the first channel that gives genuinely good advice that isn’t blatantly obvious, thank you so much
I recently found another fantastic writing resource, Brandon Sanderson's channel. The first video is called "Lecture #1: Introduction - Brandon Sanderson on Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy" ... I'd link you to it, but then my comment might get stuck in the spam filter.
@@TaranVHBrando Sando is a real one
Any Mistborn fans?
@@localscriptman Video idea: Sanderson; things he's done well, things he's done that could have been better (as he's such a successful author)
@@skaidonC Well I certainly have thoughts on his classes, but I know next to nothing about novel writing
Something that works really well for me is not to read my inspirations, but read the things that inspired them. By meeting that certain idea further back on the road before it was fully developed, I have an opportunity to turn a different corner.
Oh that's a good idea!
That goes pretty hard
Oh this is *smart*
I will try that
Totally the same. That was a huge turning point for "classical literature" for me as well. If I follow these threads back far enough, SURPRISE, they all lead to Melville, or Shakespeare, or Tolstoy, or, heck, to MILTON even. And once I got there, I was ready to actually enjoy the stories because I could see how they develop.
I think there's a lot to be said for writers reading WAY above their paygrade. You're not gonna be able to write Anna Karenina. But if that's what you're reading, your characters are going to be way better. If you're training to run a 5k, and you've got a marathoner friend you run with, you're going to CRUSH that 5k.
A thing that I have started doing recently is that whenever I am consuming some media I ask myself, "how is this helping my work that I should/want to be doing". Sometimes it is obvious, "it is the same genre" or "it has a similar structure to what I was thinking about". But sometimes the answer is just "I want to do this and I will be happy if I do - which is good"!
Re-affirming that things I am doing as things I am wanting to do and that they are helpful, is helping me a little bit.
Absolutely agree, just ask the question do I actually want to do this or am I distracting myself
Or you could do what Tolkien did: Don't plan, just write, and any time you run into a problem while writing, you stop until you figure out a solution, and when you do, you start over writing from the beginning again.
As for gardener vs architect, as a gardener I will say gardening a script is much more dangerous than gardening a book. They are both writing but books don't have constraints. Movie/show scripts do. Architects will always excel more in a script format because they plan around their constraints. If you're gardener, you could write a sequence of scenes by the seat of your pants, maybe even give them narrative fluff for your satisfaction, but don't actually write the script until you have a plan. I haven't done a lot of script writing but the little I have done I had to force myself to plan because you can't just wing time/resource constrainted mediums like that without a lot of pushback. For books? Go ahead
As a prose pantser, I think this is definitely true. I often lean toward script-writing advice because it’s so much more structured and I think viewing audiences are more sensitive to structure.
I’ve experimented with my process and planning techniques because in everything else, I am a planner. I have an advanced degree in urban planning. Yet I find it incredibly difficult to do, or adhere to as a writer-I hated myself for a long time because of it. Luckily, a book-tuber (erin Brock, maybe) turned me onto the notion of “methodological pantser.”
Essentially, i pants, but I’m aware of and practiced with the planning tools, so I’m developing a pre-pantsing development routine. Even if I don’t deploy those tools, however, they still shape how I think as I write. I hear other writers advise noobs to just write, and I kind of agree, but I think more often than not noobs end up solidifying their story and structure before they really should, making successive drafts harder to reimagine, thus fix.
Good way to put it. A lot of book readers don't mind some fluff/unoptimized pathing, some even like it; more pages to fill more time in a "mundane world." Efficient framework still benefits books, and terrible framework will kill them.... further, great framework can propel them into the brilliant-storytelling category.
Tell that to Kaufman, Tarantino, Aaron Sorkin, James Mangold, and Larry Wilson, among other successful gardener screenwriters. Just because gardening doesn't work for you doesn't mean it won't work for others and work very well. You can definitely garden successfully with the restraints of the visual form in mind.
@@kingq3904 This why I'd say Tarentino is inconsistent in his screen writing. I don't expect everyone to agree with me on that though.
@smelyely3353 What about everyone else I named? If you know about the Coen Brothers, they don't outline shit either, lol.
My contribution as a gardener is: I find that I write first in scenes (a friend told me that Kurisawa does this, so it's fun to accidentally be lumped in with him) with a great idea of the overall story and then I get a bunch of scenes down, but certainly not all of them, nowhere close to it. "Scene nuclei", if you will, large battle scenes and important events, deep conversations that I know need to happen, etc.
After I allow myself that more creative expulsion, I go into the architecture mode and start to construct and plan everything from there. I then see which scenes are missing (most of them), which I have and how they all start to connect. It's also early enough in the process (the very start) to where the events are malleable and I don't have to pull the problem out of the middle of the cake. I can bring in new characters, adapt others and make any changes to my core problems without disrupting everything I've done - because it isn't done yet.
I typically look at a character's goals and see if the scenes surrounding them are natural, make sense+follow my universe rules and if they take enough/too much time and add subtract from there.
I know nothing.
I call myself a plantser - plotter and pantser :) As I write my novel, I already have the canon figured out. I have key scenes brainstormed, but what I'm leaving to pantsing, are the actual scenes themselves that connect the key scenes together. It's fun to discover what your characters choose to do especially when you already have their core characters and how they'll develop throughout the story figured out. I'd say the plotting eases my anxiety, and the pantsing of the scenes and how they play out really bring out my excitement!
My process is almost a mirror of this 😅 I lead with an emotion or concept I want to convey attached to specific scenes.
I feel this is almost all plotters. I can't imagine it being where you plan each scene and then get to the final draft. What are you writing at that point? You're just putting all those scenes in order and calling it a day, you basically already wrote the whole book.
@@upg5147 I plan everything before I write it. I set up an overall plot outline, then I go and write quarter outlines for each section, then I go and write scene outlines. After all that, You dont have to worry about forgetting anything or falling into any plot holes. I see it as organizing my lego block before I start pitting them together.
@@straps-of-skin How are those scene outlines written out? Like bullet points? What they do for the overall story?
@@upg5147 Yes they are. I set up the main point of conflict between the characters first, then I go through and outline each relevant characters motivations so that when I start actually writing the dialogue I have a stronger idea if what they are actually “fighting” for in the specific scene. I also outline setting stuff and what not but thats the bulk of it.
I find the sweet spot for pantsing is leaving some room in my outline to have the characters take control of the story a little. Maybe there's a lull in the action and they decide they have a heart to heart in the heat of their dying campfire. And then maybe I cut that heart to heart because it was something I needed to know, but was boring as hell to read. By not getting too attached to the plan, I can savor the little surprises my characters can show me.
Love this, I just realized I do this too 😊 it works!
I'd call myself a chaotic planner. I have some gardener tendancies but I'm so busy with other creative works and school that writing is almost constantly set on the back burner for me. I haven't gotten the opportunity to sit down and write so I haven't had the chance to garden. I find I consume content about writing like this channel because it scratches that writing itch despite the fact that I don't have time to write. I end up in an endless loop of planning and changing and planning and changing because I can plan things out in my head while working or doing mundane tasks but can't/don't make the time to to sit down and actually write.
bruh i feel you on a spiritual level. theres this project ive been wanting to write out but so far i only got a rough outline of it (that the story itself is already deviating from in my head and on paper) and the story keeps building and changing in my mind every day. i dont make time to write because my creative energy is spent on schoolwork, and then the little i do write on a document i end up getting anxious about 😅 i think things'll liven up once graduation comes around
Agree agree agree, and I think the “hustle culture” dickish tone here is the way it NEEDS to be delivered. I know I’m the type of person to lean toward the Instagram reels for 2 hours over a dedicated rejuvenating movie, but obviously feel better when I commit to the latter. Feel the same way about movie theaters forcing you to do that. And one of my favorite things my screenwriting professor does is assign us films to watch specific to our project bc in the end that IS the best way to the end goal. And yet? Knowing all that? More often than not when left to my own devices I choose the device that fits in my pocket. I know you’re speaking against re-watches but I can picture myself coming back to this video a lot when I need motivation and need someone to yell at me about it. I’ve been needing a creativity specific hustle culture video. Thank you.
Also as someone with an eating disorder the food analogy is funny bc it kinda shows that in some ways I’m fighting the same war on two fronts
I think the “hustle culture” dickish tone (I see the first part, but not the dick-ish tone) it is not needed. I delve into productivity, How To Be Successful on TH-cam type video for a good while and what I learned after all of that is that once I started to liberate myself from this idea of being productive, of needing to grind to get things done so I can fulfill my goals and instead cultivated the intrinsic motivation I have to do what I want to do is when I started to not only feel better and less self-loathing for failing to get things done, but I also started to get things done.
It could be a personal thing, and procrastination is a multifaceted issue that requires a multifaceted solution to truly deal with, but the mindset of distancing away from "hustle" and "grind" help me a lot. Although, the advice of actively and consciously choosing the media you watch it's really good and complementary with what I been going through.
Honestly re watches are a must when you have bad memory or when you need inspiration or need to analyze something( to get better at wiritting or maybe for a school Project ), but doing it too much can indeed make the experience less than it was
I think if you wanna look at your phone during a movie, it's neither good nor bad enough to engage with the human part of your brain that wants to know why it's good or bad.
The hypnotic Windows XP screensaver forces me to agree with every statement you make
Doesn't matter what you do, as long as you make the choice to do it. You can be lazy without being on constant autopilot. This is also a very good way to mitigate ADHD symptoms for the days where your brain feels like it's at 2% capacity, very cool video thank you.
this is a great add-on because as easy as it may sound to someone without adhd, sometimes I can't just sit and watch a whole movie or series. Understimulation is a real thing. I also sometimes can't just watch a new show or movie because overstimulation is also a real thing. One option may be better for me than the other depending on what set of symptoms my brain is presenting me that day (or hour or minute). Making an active choice on what I'm consuming and how I'm consuming it and being fully aware of that choice is the most important part.
@@nbucwa6621 man the general specimen has shifted since the golden era. I guess if the movie had a little hand that came out and jacked you off it would reach the stimulating needs of some of our fighting new generations.
watching this made me realize why i'm in a stump right now. i have a friend who, albeit doesn't really know what the hell i'm writing about, gives GREAT ideas, and whenever i talk to her about my works she always has something to suggest which makes the pieces link together better. back then i never talked to others about my works because i was embarrassed but now i realized that i'm not the type who can productively work alone. great video man 👍
You’re the first TH-camr I’ve ever seen that I feel is so similar to me. I also fall into media traps but I also like to watch cinema, and in order to write my novel I started to read Frankenstein as a productive piece of investigation. I’m stuck at home without a job or school (3 month gap period) and I have nobody to talk to about writing. Your videos are almost therapeutic to learn that what I’m doing is a struggle, and a step in the right direction. Thank yoi
I agree that I feel like I get more out of these videos than just writing advice. I feel inspired and that I'm being spoken to as a writer instead of a novice, not being patronised. They're very on my wavelength and make me feel creative and inspired.
"Don't wait for consumption choices to inspire your project. Allow your project to inspire your consumption choices."
And this is exactly why I decided to sit down and start properly reading A Song of Ice and Fire and rewatch certain Sopranos episodes.
But in more important news, this is damn valuable advice.
I'm working on a project surrounding the Korean war. Because of this I decided that I would consume and engage with media that are also on that topic. Documentaries, mostly, but also MASH, and other fictional interpretations.
Letting the work inspire the media is genius and thats how I allow my relaxation/refuel time feed my productivity on projects :)
I used to be addicted to watching TV as a kid. In My 20's when I was going to school and trying to get ahead I noticed I would turn on the TV first thing when I got home. I unplugged it and was good for a very long time. Some where in 2013 or 2014 I got addicted to TH-cam and now I'm back to suare one.
I used to be a pantser, 100%, when i was a kid writing stories. Then later, i started planning things out more and more, leading to nothing ever getting done because i needed to be "finished" with my worldbuilding before i ever put anything to page beyond an outline. I think nowadays im trying to lean more into the pantser side of things for my actual scene writing (fixing mistakes via revision on a smaller scale), while remaining more of an architect with the worldbuilding and outlines, because thats where mistakes and inconsistenci3s matter much more.
Still in the learning process, or relearning i suppose, but its going well! Who knows, i may actually have my first finished script by the end of the summer lol
A few years ago i had a tightly plotted, designed and worldbuilt magnum opus comic. I have 10 or so WIPs of pages. My silly little fancomic i make based purely on vibes howevever, is about to break 100 pages.
Pantsing lets me ride the excitement of ideas as they happen, bypasses the "im a hack oh god" stage because im done by the time its happening, and gives me a place to force interesting twists "in the edit" as i construct the timeline and plot. Plus, people seem to like my self indulgent bs for some reason.
I wouldnt nessesarily recommend it, but its working for me in the space I'm in right now. Editing a screenplay or novel into submission is also probably easier than figuring out how to place completed 5-15 page sets on a timeline, too.
As an extreme pantser (really tried the planner method for a while but found I did my best work winging it), I feel like none of the stated reasons really get at the heart of why it works for me. Which is fair as I didn't discover this until recently. Basically, I need to be in the story to know how the story goes. I need to experience the plot with the characters for it to come alive. I'm not able to get proper emotion and understanding just looking at a plot or a character outline and so my additions feel forced and lifeless.
Recently I've tried to get back into planning after having spent two years now in full pantser mode and it's tough. Legitimately facing block because I don't know what should come next (well, I know, but again it feels lifeless), but the stories I pants are flowing smoothly and I'm right where I need to be. When I throw caution to the wind and just write, suddenly the world is alive. Suddenly the characters have wants and needs and they want to go in different directions, and I follow them all throughout like a dedicated cameraman.
Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's frustrating, often it takes long (2nd draft becomes the clean up draft). Sometimes the plot is pretty much whole inside my head, I'm just getting it down on paper. And sometimes I don't know where the fuck I'm going, I'm literally making up brand new characters on the spot and bullshitting. I suspect there are a lot less pantsers in the community than one would be led to believe. Something about the stupid belief that true writers are artsy and intuitive + not wanting to put in the work to learn story structure. Which is bizarre because I'd say knowing structure is doubly important when you pants. You gotta memorize that shit.
5:25, I bought an awesome used Samsung Note on ebay, and I love it for doodling and if I make a point to not get distracted, then I don't
BUT
I've recently realized that nothing beats a physical notebook. The tactile nature literally grounds you.
I theorize the modern human NEEDS more physical & tactile experiences than we are getting on average, including working with physical paper. I can spend 8 hours a day working with excel sheets and text editing for my job, and I've realized there's a certain frustration to constantly manipulating things you can't touch. A discomfort that I've suppressed for who knows how long, but I can't do anything about. As nice as Ctrl-Z is, having physical access to your work is nicer. It's just mentally grounding and more peaceful.
I've been feeling the same way as an artist. I started out with 90% digital art, but I've moved to 90% traditional art. Not having undo is such a blessing, my problem solving skills are so much sharper and I think harder. I can't thank our AI overlords enough for encouraging me to make the switch!
Fr fr on God you can hit that media grind or be media blind 😤😤😤🔥🔥🔥
As someone who, for various reasons, was forced into going phoneless recently, it lead to the most healing, inspiring, exciting week. I watched movies and read books without the ability to scroll. I drove without access to maps, and learned more about my town as a result. It's a lot harder when your phone is handy, but turning it off, leaving it in a room, convincing yourself that you'll miss NOTHING - calls, emails, posts - that can't be caught up on later, is something you won't regret.
Architect gone a bit gardener here. For me, it’s about the ability to trust yourself enough to experiment and go off outline if something new (and maybe even better) surprises you while you’re writing, and then to know for a fact that you’ll be able to go back and either edit what came before to make the new path work, or go back and try again if the new path ultimately didn’t work.
Editing is everything. The better I’ve become at editing, the better my work has become overall, which allows me to loose that anxious grip a bit on mapping out every little thing before I even start writing what I pray will be a perfect first draft. It’s not going to be. No matter how much planning I do, I’m going to have to fix things that seemed fine in my outline, until I got to that specific scene in the draft where the rhythm or chemistry or motivation was off in some way I genuinely could not have seen until it was there on the page in front of my face.
And I get that this vid is about efficiency, but I think even though (or maybe even especially because) the industry is how it is, we should be pushing back against the cult of efficiency, stop moralizing productivity, and insist that great stories often take time to tell.
Do you want to be *hyper efficient marketing dude who's very good in problem solving* to my *scatter brained dude overflowing with what ifs and wouldnt it be cools* ? We could help each other maybe!
Dude why are you so cool? Like what is it about your vibe that’s so comforting?
Me: "why can't I come up with any interesting ideas!"
Also me: watches Psych, Monk, and the Mentalist on a loop, with little to no variation.
Maybe something needs to change.
I am an intense architect that tracks a lot of details throughout my narratives, but I've found that sitting down and gardening with it, finally writing it out, can both reaffirm that the planning is close to airtight and generate surprises that make the process feel less scripted even though its been planned. When I first got into writing, I was a gardener until I saw the power of planning. It's really about finding balance in different periods of your life and recognizing how much time you can devote to projects at any given time: gardening supplies immediate rewards and a renewed inspiration in your current project while planning meticulously crafts a sturdy foundation that you can rely on for a long time.
this channel is a literal goldmine. NEVER CHANGE REAL LIFE ALIEN GUY!!
Not with creative projects specifically, but I used to be a fully "live by the vibe"/"feel my way through problems" kind of person. I haven't converted to needing to plan everything, but after a lifetime of depression and a stint at the hospital, something clicked into place and I feel like I found the yin to that yang. As an example, I had played guitar for years, and half written a dozen songs, but never really saw anything through to the end. Within a year of the hospital, I had written and fully produced a full song, and written another. They aren't amazing works of art, but they feel *very* expressive of who I was, and I think I'll always be proud of myself for that much.
I think I need the 'gardening' in order to speak truth to me, and what I want to say. But the 'planner' part was also needed, to give me some structure to operate within. It kind of removed writer's block, before it would even happen.
More than anything, I think the 'planner' part also helped me focus on what was actually important about what I was working on. If I felt really strongly about adding or removing a line, I just did it. But those times I wasn't sure, when it was close~ish to 50/50, it became very easy to look to my plan to help sway me one way or the other. "Yes this line is funny, but the point of this section is really the wordplay, so I'll ditch it."
Pantser here: every time I try to plan (believe me, I've tried) it does not work for me at all. I write this uninspired, basic, boring as crap outline that makes me want to throw it away and never think about the story again. In order to learn about the characters, I have to spend time with them in the context of the story. This leads to A LOT of rewrites (the current story I'm working on is the fourth completely rewritten draft) but I personally enjoy that a lot more because they end up feeling developed and like real people. If you're a writer who can just whip up a fully-fledged human being out of thin air and know exactly how they'd act/react in every single situation, that's awesome. But I can't do that, and I'm okay with it. The fun for me is in the journey.
hello, man! how is the story going?
I think about Architect vs Gardener this way: George RR Martin is a Gardener and he's written probably the best fantasy series since Lord of the Rings. He's also written himself into a corner so tight that he's spent more that a decade untangling it, and he's so fed up with it that he doesn't want to finish the thing any more and turned his legacy over to a couple of hacks.
All that to end up with an incomplete work that's comparable, but still inferior to, Tolkien who was maybe the most extreme example of an Architect. Lord of Rings is so dense that there are university degrees solely devoted to it's study. If you've ever seen someone described as a Tolkien scholar that's not a joke, they went to college for that. He had hundreds of years of history, an entire cosmology and multiple complete languages before writing a single word of Fellowship. He's written a classic that will endure for centuries.
I can't tell you the number of times people have commented that they forgot Game of Thrones even existed after the show ended.
Here's where I shock you by revealing Tolkien was actually a gardener who was a religious rewriter. His friend CS Lewis was the architect.
Every word of that on GRRM is a hot take from a frustrated soul.
A show and a movie are different things. The show exploded his readership and consequential literary legacy for generations.
As you said, the show is being forgotten. That statement right there makes me wonder why you mention it at all? The books are his baby, and the show has given him a massive readership.
Or you can only see through the scriptwriter’s lenses… in which case, I wonder why you mention the _book author_ at all?
Do _you_ even know what you are about?
Idk who needs to hear this, but...
You ain't gonna tolkien your way to a happy and productive life.
You can't worldbuild your colossal, monumental, way over-detailed setting for a decade where the vast majority of stuff in the setting is in no way applicable to your cast of incredibly by-the-books barebones characters and their arcs and then have gratification and livability fall into your lap for your "generous" contribution to society.
Neither would tolkien approve of doing so. Lotr isn't the standard. It was a vast cosmological fluke.
“I’m a meticulous sort of bloke…”
-J.R.R. Tolkien
I moved into my own place recently and have an actual work room now and I can say for sure fact I have been more productive than I had been in the past 3 years because of it on all accounts. I only work in my bedroom now if I'm having an actual physical issue that requires me to sit with my legs fully outstretched rather than bent at the knees.
I have put off experiencing most entertainment so that my work isn't influenced by other pieces of work. Becoming influenced by the work of others is something I'm trying to steer clear of so that the experience is as fresh as a person can manage. If I were to take your advice, I would directly feed into the kind of thing I'm trying to avoid completely.
Great take here. ADHD gang checking in lol. I barely use social media because I find that it kills any creativity and just turns my brain to sludge and kills my self-confidence. I would much rather play a video game with an intriguing story or play Dungeons and Dragons or watch a movie or read a book. Literally anything is better than TikTok and self-hatred and downward spiraling and doomscrolling. I even prioritize my TH-cam consumption around stuff I find intellectually intriguing, ALA your channel. And when it comes to the media I consume I don't always prioritize consuming media that will directly inspire my work, but I do try to keep my work in mind and when I *do* consume media that happens to relate, I can apply it.
As far as Gardener vs Plotter, I am a gardener but I have made myself a plotter for my novel. Because I can come up with a great prompt and write a few great chapters on that inspiration, but I will never write a full length novel just going off the cuff like that. I NEED to plan out the major points of the story until the end or else I will never reach it. I don't need to plan out every individual scene but I need a rock-solid idea of where my story starts and the major beats that are going to take place and where it ends. I need to have an end goal at least in mind, even if it turns out different than expected.
Edit: ALSO CONGRATs on 125k subs!!
"Allow your project to inspire your consumption choices." Gold.
I’m an architect trying to learn gardening as an additional tool. I really like the planning part of writing have always naturally gravitated towards it but over time, a disability of mine that includes things like brain fog, memory issues, fatigue and chronic pain has slowly gotten worse so I only have a limited amount of energy I can really spend sitting and doing something. Initially I tried to work past it but it was like trying to form ideas out of nothing (or like trying to lay those tracks on thin air).
So instead I’ve started keeping a notebook around me at all times so when an idea comes I can write it down and revise what I’m working on in the moment. Then once I have a basic understanding of the themes, plot, characters and relationships between them all I go back to the planner stage and work from what I have to solidify it all and plan out the basics of scenes (not the exactly outlines so I don’t overwhelm or exhaust myself with too many things to keep in mind while writing the draft; more I keep a general idea of where the characters are + thematic parallels with ideas of specific, possibly important lines to remember) and then I go on and actually start writing the story itself, sometimes revising the plan if something feels better one once actually wholly written.
Do you want to be *hyper efficient marketing dude who's very good in problem solving* to my *scatter brained dude overflowing with what ifs and wouldnt it be cools* ? We could help each other maybe!
To give some thoughts as a natural architect turned (mostly) gardener: As you made reference to, there’s a realness my writing never reached until I let my characters experience the scenes freely. To be more specific, I think it comes down to capturing the natural flow of dialogue and character thoughts, enabling strong clear personalities to come through in character voices, and keeping readers on the edge of their seats beat-to-beat -- meaning not huge unexpected twists and turns, but within scenes having all these little moments of microstakes where you’re left honestly curious about how a character is going to react, or what they’re going to say next, or where a beat is leading us.
As far as your “Have I extracted all the inspiration I can from this?” question, I hear the sentiment. But I also think if it’s a piece of storytelling you truly love, there’s always more to learn. If you’re not yet capable of reproducing that aspect of what you love in your own stories -- maybe that means you’re just stuck and you need to work harder and gain more experience etc. But that could also be a sign to go back to what first inspired you, even if you’ve already gone back dozens of times, and rewatch and rethink and relearn everything until you’ve leveled up your understanding of that favorite story of yours. I find there’s no end to what I can learn from my favorite stories, and the more I work to improve my craft, those shifts in perspective allow me to find new lessons hiding in places I never thought to look every time I come back. (I don’t think you’re necessarily disagreeing with this btw, just thought it was an important point to highlight. I also don’t know if you’d call this going back for “inspiration” per se or if learning is a different category.)
The other reason I think people find it valuable to retreat to old favorites for inspiration might be gardener-specific. Favorite stories often have some indefinable feel to their dialogue, a flavor to their big emotional moments, a mood, a tone, etc. Grounding yourself subconsciously in the fuzziest but also most pivotal features of your favorite stories can be an irreplaceable type of foundation to perform a day’s gardening work. Granted, it can also be a deluded, unthought-out, overly hopeful “maybe the good writing will rub off on me”-type daydream. Gotta be honest about whether it’s actually helping you, or whether you’re in denial about harboring some superstitious osmosis-like idea of how to improve at writing. But many times I’ve gone back and watched, for example, particular One Piece scenes to just knock myself back into the headspace of “whatever ideas I come up with today, this is the benchmark for what I want them to feel like”.
Another place where it sounds like we differ is writing environment. (Although I prefer Starbucks to Panera) I agree it’s very helpful to have a dedicated work place, but I would say I still end up doing about 10% of my creative work (and probably a good 40% of my best creative work) sitting in bed at like 4am. There’s a Ray Bradbury quote about how creativity is like a stray cat following you home: if you turn around and try to catch it, it will run away; if you ignore it completely, it will lose interest and wander off; but if you pretend not to see it and then glance over your shoulder every so often, it will happily follow you home. By far, the most guaranteed way of getting out of writer’s block for me is giving up. I slam my laptop shut in frustration, vow to start working on a new project tomorrow, turn off my light, try to go to sleep -- and THAT’s when my mind frees up completely and all the best ideas and solutions come. Tricking myself into thinking I’m not in work mode, going to my non-work place, and then letting myself “truly” get to work has been a vital part of my routine. (Again, I don’t know if you’d necessarily disagree with this.)
Last thing I wanted to comment on: “You have nothing but your instincts, and most people, myself included, don’t have powerful enough instincts.” Same. But also, this feels like short-term advice. If your goal is to become a good solid writer in the next 5 years, you have way more control over your conscious mind’s part in creativity (planning) than your unconscious mind’s (instincts). But instincts are also trainable, and if your goal is to become a GREAT writer in the next 20 years, both roads are equally viable imo. The hesitance you mentioned of gardeners to spoil the honesty if their writing with layers of inorganic analytical planning is sometimes misplaced. But so many of the greatest lines and moments and characters come from unplanned bursts of instinct-based creativity that I totally understand prioritizing the development of instincts over conscious creative strategy, even if it may be a more ambitious and more difficult road.
Great vid! Nice to peek back into the planner's world every once in a while.
Thanks man - totally see where you’re coming from. This sort of discussion really speaks to how insanely different writers’ brains can be. It’s like a sport where everybody is allowed to play by completely different rules
@@localscriptman it's surprising how often it's not just different rules but opposite rules
I'm sad to see your old videos are gone, I miss them
i've learned my lesson about planning ahead the painful way. the only times when i actually go with the flow is for very short projects, and even then, a small outline can help sooo much.
I do agreement.
Over the past 2 years I have built out a world and the story I want to tell within it. I even found a good creative partner in one of my long-time friends. I personally have found the gardening to be enjoyable for small excerpts and short stories within the world/story, and as I write what's cool or makes sense at the time I start to have questions about how it would/could or couldn't fit within the rules I have set up.
To further your analogy, gardening is when you want to see something grow, you don't know what it will grow into or when it will die, or even if it'll be the same as when it started, its pretty to look at and sometimes the joy is even in watching how it unfolds. creating a blueprint for a building almost always has a purpose or need in mind, but especially an end. The biggest difference to me is that Finality behind a pre-planned and built thing vs the organic growth and cultivation of thing. Gardening is when you want to see how far you can go, how long something can last, how big or how deep it can go by just exploring the unknown without ever looking behind you to see how you got there. Its two different types of media. Family guy, or the MCU are both examples of how far can we make something go, while any show that has a clear definitive end with a clear well-defined message is something that was built with that message in mind.
As a planner I hate when people tell me “just start writing!” Like I’m gonna somehow freestyle complex world building
Yep yep that’s the struggle
loved this. as someone who just completed a giant project and has spent about a year trying to get back on the horse, this was a great take
I don’t have time to watch this video yet but local is the only channel with notifications that show up when the video is posted and I want my comment to have a little liked by creator thing for internet validation
Give this creature a like, goshdarnit!
Ideas are like vampires. They usually suck😂
I think i would call myself a gardener? I try to plan, and for some projects it does work alright. However I find myself overwhelmed by the possibilities? I guess? In elementary school I used to hate writing rough drafts of things and then completely rewriting them later. I think its just how my brain functions, I hate planning things super far ahead. While acting I love improv more than anything. I also do freerunning parkour which consists entirely of making split second decisions possibly for life and death. However, youll still look at a route and plan it 10 seconds in advance. While improving, you still have ideas that youll work torwards. There is always a solid idea of how the story will go that is hard to put on paper. Its almost like writing it down concretes it into existence, and id rather have the chunks of planned story in my brain that i eventually fit together on the spot to make a story. And then i can go back to any spot and modify it to make it fit this theme better, or maybe swap these two scenes for better pacing etc etc. In the end it all boils down to: I plan in my head, then fit it together like legos while im writing.
As a guy whove been trying to write a book for 3 years i felt like i needed to see this
Since I only have one room and do everything in that room, I tend to listen to specific music when working on my project and only then.
Instead of designating areas you could use other things to activate the right mindset.
A designated room, a certain time of day, specific music, there are a lot of ways to do this but the core principle of setting up some pavlovian trigger to go into creative mode seems totally indispensable to me.
I only have one room too, and I have a "thinking lamp" that's just a small lava lamp. I turn on the lava lamp and another bright desk lamp, and turn off my main light so the rest of my room is dim and my desk is bright with an eye catching lava lamp that softens shadows and has a pleasing warmth.
I later found out that the University of Hawaii did a study and asked students (who mostly all lived in dorms and all had a desk lamp) to turn that desk lamp on ONLY when they were studying and to turn it off when they were done, and the students that did this started studying way better.
Another thing one-roomers should be doing is making their bed. It's hard for me because of my cat, but I've been better about this.
My sleep cue is a box fan I put in the doorway. I sleep so much harder with that airflow, but I recently realized when I turn it off-- it feels like my day is starting. Almost like "boxfan room" and "daytime room" are two different places.
@@grain9640 I have a writing shirt! Beautiful fish patterns. Fun tactic. Nice to know there's science behind why this functions.
That Pajama Sam background got me dyin. Love it my dude.
Finally a type 3 pov on creativity, thank you
I do it for the (ennea)gram
Third rewatch of One Piece, NO REGRETS
'Allow your project to inspire your consumption choices' ...that's the best advice I've heard in a while.
I do agreement, I do. My approach to productivity recently is... not thinking about productivity. At least, not in the way I have in the past. Previously, I've viewed productivity as an inside -> out process: enacting my will/discipline (inside) on the world around me (out). Flipping this has been incredibly helpful. Instead of prioritizing how I interact with the world, be mindful of the outside -> in: what am I letting influence my internal and creative process? To my dismay, 700 episode anime rewatches, youtube binging, and general social media debauchery do not build the ideal environment for maintaining my mental health, and my mental health-contrary to every popular portrayal of artists, ever-seems rather important if I'm interested in doing... anything, art included.
Great video! Maybe I'll watch again later while simultaneously browsing my phone and snacking and discording (guilt, guilt, guilt) and such.
@5:00 Okay, true, but also I'm homeless living out of my friends living room, so multiple rooms aren't exactly an option... I do go to a starbucks for that same reason though.
For me, the biggest appeal of writing and just consuming stories comes from the idea that it's the one place where "anything is possible" is not wrong, and you can actually pull off anything in your story with a good enough execution, just some are harder to make work than others. The goal to start writing has pretty much spawned out of wanting to see some really fun ideas i've had in my head come to life, and getting tired of waiting for the near-impossible chance it not only happens, but is done well.
For a while though, I got discouraged because of thinking that by doing all the hard work of writing up that story, i'll rob myself of enjoying it personally and leaving that only (hopefuly) for the rest. A big help with getting through that was to approach writing more as a game or challange, where you think up literally any idea, and do your best to find out how to make it work, research all the stuff that may help you with it and gain inspiration from other works that may be similar to it. It's not easy, but it is an enjoyable challange.
There's no such thing as a wasted draft if you're still learning how to write/tell stories. If you currently lack the skills to put your ideas on paper, it matters a lot less what the ideas are and lot more how much time you spend practicing. Not that you can't practice outlining while also practicing putting narrative on a page, but if you already have outlining skills spending a lengthy amount of time putting together the perfect outline for a story you don't have a prayer of telling might not be the most efficient way to spend your time. If a writer hasn't before, I highly recommend getting one complete draft of something finished. Even if the result is garbage you want to burn, you now have a better idea of what telling a full story requires than you could of before, and everything else you write will benefit from that knowledge.
I'm a natural architect who has found the value of gardening. I spent about five years developing the history of my fantasy world. I was reading and watching everything I could about writing, and putting it into practice within my world's history. I developed a LOT, and eventually I got to the point where I had planned so much Contextual info that when I made the jump to writing short stories; and later novels; set in my world, I found I barely had to plan at all. The stories flowed naturally and realistically Because I had done so much work beforehand. I had maybe a rough Rough outline of the first novel, just historical bullet points, but even those points I had to let go of because the character's story was flowing so naturally. I really felt like my conscious mind had to "not get involved" and release control. Now, in the fourth draft, I am curating it with all the intention that I can. There IS a lot of back writing to do, but I only found my main character's personal journey AFTER the first draft was done. I saw the story that had flowed out and realized... ok, this story is about powerlessness in the face of trauma. I had NO idea that was the story based off of my bullet points. Second draft then I was able to tweak every scene to just sharpen those intentions in each moment and movement. I've kept pretty much every scene in my first draft, I've just primarily re-written dialog and adjusted the exposition ratio. Now I feel like I'm just not writing if it isn't the gardening method. I think, for me, it just needs to be bookended by planning.
That being said... book TWO in the series, which I haven't begun writing yet, has a Very in depth outline and I have planned nearly every scene, so we'll see how that goes.
I see tremendous value in both ways of thinking.
Would you consider doing a video on how you would balance a "9 to 5" with creating art and trying to be a healthy person who still goes outside, exercises an socializes?
“Allow your project to inspire [what you watch, read, etc]”
This! I had figured this one out myself some time ago but can’t agree more. Sometimes I’ll deliberately watch or read a thing that’s in the same genre/mood/etc as what I’m working on. Granted sometimes it is something I’ve seen before, but if so it’s done deliberately because it has themes/characters/etc I want to revisit.
“Don’t sit around and wait for your consumption choices to inspire your projects, allow your projects to inspire your consumption choices”
Love it!
Ironically enough Ive started work on a scriptwriting project in order to be more productive, and that task has led me to consuming your videos. It doesnt feel like passive entertainment, it feels like im actually learning something thats getting me closer to the goal. thanks man
I find that in the moment of conceiving an idea, I fall in love with it and have the same drive and passion a gardener would. Although, I understand my own ambition and am an extremely detail oriented person-in that sense, I am an architect: I want to make sure every corner and crevice is top-notch. It is a gruelling and lengthy process, but I do enjoy the technicality.
Also, it's nice to see someone so outwardly spoken on their process as I can relate it to my own! It feels less... lonesome.
Another day another banger, was just thinking of this with my friend. You make some good points, keep up the work
Thank god I've always hated the concept of TikToks and Shorts. I just don't get how people can play a game or watch a movie while scrolling stuff at the same time.
I'm a natural architect who can indulge in gardening every now and then. In practice I benefit from cycling between them. What ends up happening is that I sit down to write a manuscript informed by my very careful outline (plot, boom, third rail, boom), and during the writing stage I realize that there were emotional or plot holes I didn't account for, or Cooler and Better ways to execute the outline so it's not as formulaic or restrictive. Generally I can caulk over the holes with improvised characterization or troubleshooting in real time as I write. It's faster than if I were to try to interrogate *where* those holes where in the architecture stage. I would never have found them unless I spent an absurd amount of time ruminating until it's watertight. It's like learning on the job. Diving in head-first and figuring stuff out as I go. I would say I implement 75% Plotting to 25% Pantsing. The Pantsing portion is where the personality and magic comes out, but the Plotting portion is integral to making sure I don't write a novel of just VIBES and that there's themes and Everything Means Something.
Do you want to be *hyper efficient marketing dude who's very good in problem solving* to my *scatter brained dude overflowing with what ifs and wouldnt it be cools* ? We could help each other maybe!
I'm more of a gardener myself, but it's not because I'm ideologically opposed to planning. I think of the planning as an organic, rather than mechanic, process, of "growing" a story, not "building" one. You need to plant the seed and water it to get the plant, but nature also does that on its own. Sometimes, you just harvest stuff you found in the woods. At the end of the day, what matters is that there is a garden in the garden. Or a story on the page.
But I wouldn't be here if I didn't get anything from it. Love your work x
"what if" and "wouldn't it be cool if" is so much of my notes and idea process. Just the other night I was out to dinner with a friend discussing a story and spontaneously figured out the magic system for the story, along with some details that plugged a plot hole.
As an artist and a writer, I feel it’s best to get the big things down like you said. I make sure to get the big ideas/scenes down, get to the core of my characters and then I put in the details. Like with drawing, I put the circles and lines down of the sketch first to guide me then I develop it from there. I’ll make adjustments here and there if the idea strikes but after a certain point you can’t change the whole thing. You can change a position of a limb or placement of an object but you can’t just turn the whole drawing on its head unless you want to start over. Same with writing. I got the base then I just let the rest come to me. I’ve even found that at school during PE, I’ll just walk and listen to music. This hour of just being in my own mind every day has given me so many good ideas and a lot of time to brainstorm. You have to figure out what amount of planning and just bullshitting it takes for your work to come out as you’d like it. Some people figure it out early on, some take years. But this is just how I do it.
I hate movie theaters tbh. i can never focus on the film. People are always making noises, eating, drinking. Big TV + AirPods Max are the way to go for me. I love movies and since im not feeling guilty anymore for f*ing over the Box office numbers.. i feel complete while watching movies exclusively at home in total silence.. 🙂
this channel is like a free masterclass. there's so much helpful information here that is just available for anyone to absorb. thank you for making this channel to help people like me learn how to make things :D
I appreciate the Pipes Screensaver being the background of this video, perfect visual metaphor between boundless creativity and strict rules for being creative in that way.
I'm not gonna lie I have never felt as called out as I was with this video. I love it.
We love when a Local video starts with a slightly existential monologue making me question my life.
That is a really, REALLY good point about the bedroom. And it describes my bedroom 100%. Even the damn minifridge that I never use (it’s practically a microfridge)
As an artist/writer/Dungeon Master/full time utility worker, there’s a reason I’ve only rewatched my favorite show *once.* Running fun DnD trains the “pantser” part of your brain. It’s tough at first.
It helps that I did a LOT of pantsing as a kid and teen, mostly with fanfiction. That led to my mentor. He was already published, and just keeps knocking out projects after becoming a dad/game creator/polyglot/teacher of teens and other schoolteachers. Thing is… He started as a gardener. Now he’s half-gardener, half-pantser. He just goes with it and makes shit up with the flow sometimes, because he focuses on efficient thinking and efficient time management. In the process, he’s taught me a bunch about gardening (both literally and metaphorically).
Yes! I love finding media that will support my creative project, or make me question somethings I'm doing with it. Sometimes I get really lucky and find, movies, or documentaries, or youtube vids at the right time to help me. I've never been someone who can put on something in the background or having a comfort show that I watch multiple times. Definitely not a judgement call, the world is hard and time is short if a person does something to relax, and it doesn't hurt them or others, go for it. My brain doesn't work that way though.
Architect vs gardener, speaking of brains how they work... I consider myself somewhere in between, but more loose-y-goose-y than most architects. I have a garden with architecture in it. I have a entry (inciting incident) and steps along the garden, like a step-stone path that are scenes or key points in the plot. I have certain shapes of beds (reoccuring things that pop in my stories) people matter and have worth, male and female friendships, ect. Tropes that I like or general concepts make up a lot of the flowers or ground cover.
I have tried to outline. I've tried a scene by scene outline, and looser less detailed ones, but it's like it shuts off my motivation to get the words out. I shut down on the story before I start. In the case of a detailed outline I rarely finish the outline itself. I can't explain why this might be, I actually find myself yearning for structure 8 times out of 10 in my life, so it's not a distaste for that. My brain might have some peculiarities, I was extremely premature and had a brain bleed, perhaps multiple, I have a diagnosis for a general learning disability and ocd. I got a college degree through sheer force of will because I like to fight nebulous institutions lol. All that doesn't matter though, honestly although I've been writing since I was 8 and I'm 37 now, I'm still figuring out what processes work for me. ^_^;;
As always thanks for the food for thought Lucas!
Hayley ^_^
I'm a natural architect. Writing outlines and meticulously planning everything in the story is the most fun part of the writing process for me. I really don't see the perspective of "you can't have an impactful or surprising story if you outline it hard beforehand" or "structuring it all out sucks the soul from the story". I don't think it's true at all! BUT. Over the years that I've been writing, I HAVE had to see the benefit of the gardening approach. The projects I have the most passion for are all long-form. I start out the outlines, and sometimes I even finish them, but almost every single time, I've burnt out and not finished them. Not ABANDONED them, just let them sit in my WIP folder and collect dust until I remember them months/years later. But all the projects I've ever actually sent out and published were short-form things I just... sat down and wrote in 1-3 sessions. I'm not as enthusiastic about them as my long-form stuff, but I FINISHED them! And I've become a better writer because I was ACTUALLY WRITING SOMETHING! I guess what I'm trying to say is that sometimes you literally just... have to write. Sit down and just write. You can't be your best if you're caught up entirely on planning, and you can't be your best if you just go in blind and mess around without thought. You gotta find a good balance. Which is obvious, probably didn't need to be said, but whatever.
Do you want to be *hyper efficient marketing dude who's very good in problem solving* to my *scatter brained dude overflowing with what ifs and wouldnt it be cools* ? We could help each other maybe!
I know nothing about screen writing but putting the general tips to writing music is hitting hard. Got me feeling motivated
Best essayist on TH-cam 👏👏
I’ve had similar revelations about committing to a piece of media and being selective about inspirations before, but it’s good to have it again in video form. Hell, I saw an article advocating for the same when consuming music just last week, keeping hold of or discovering the joys of tangibly owning music rather than streaming it.
I also like the uninterrupted completeness of the cinema / movie theatre experience, as you mentioned, and reasonably recreating that when I want to watch a film (even at home). I’ve personally refused to binge shows now, taking my time with episodes and relishing in that digestible once-a-week experience the way we used to take them in. Letting things breathe, and choosing to slow down, has actually helped a lot.
Thanks for this, and carry on with the good work.
The physicality is very important. I started to truly take writing seriously was when I bought a faux-leather notebook that I took with me everywhere for expressly one purpose - soon as I have an idea, I pull it out and write it down. Good idea, bad idea, doesn't matter. Write it down, make it REAL. Now it's no longer bouncing around in your head - now it's a physical proof of it, and you can actually go about working with it. I put no other pressures on me at that time. No daily word goals, no challenges - just this one thing. Write physical notes and put down the date you did them on. That's it. And it took a while before it became something I did naturally. The first entries were spaced out at days, sometimes weeks. Sometimes even months!
What this practice showed me was that first off, I had to truly own the idea that I want to write. Some random notepad files or word documents lost in my PC hard drive don't work. Physical notes work, because I can reach out and grab that notebook even right now and check it. Second, it shows that ideas aren't precious. They're kinda mundane and boring, and on their own don't actually do a lot. That notebook is full of discarded ideas or ideas I have worked on for so long that it's hard to recognize them.
But that's the thing - that's the third, most important part. This notebook is a piece of evidence, an empiric fact that writing takes time, that it requires going through lots of ideas, scrapping many of them, and keeping working. This notebook is an artefact, the start of the journey, and though the last entry in it was from 2020, it's in my arm's reach always. It's what helped me outline, draft and write not just a novel, but an entire universe that I am now working on daily simply because that's just what I do now. It is no longer something I need to consciously think about doing, I just do it because I've done it for years.
I have different mode of physicality to my writing, now. My wall is filled with sticky notes of small ideas, small things for the setting I've not bothered to codify. And while I do have the issue of one room fulfilling most purposes, as soon as I write on that conspiracy-lunatic style sticky note wall, I remember - yeah, that's the work I'm doing every day. These are the tiny crystallized ideas that contribute to that greater whole. And sometimes I take some down, replace them with better ones. The sticky note is only so big, I can fit in only so much text - so for the idea to remain on the now crowded wall, it has to be worth it.
I find I do a kind of one-two approach to gardening and planning: I start out writing a few disjointed scenes and running through scenes in my head and once I've got the characters and the themes solidified in my head, then I move on to creating an outline as thoroughly as possible and from there, create a first draft.
Just wanted to say your content has really inspired me and given me the tools to get working on a novel I’d been dreaming about writing for years. Thanks so much for your amazing work
also for making the whole process entertaining :)
Extremely good description of Pantsers VS Plotters. Every time I see someone saying plotting kills creativity, I wonder why they believe I am not creative while I am plotting the story. Or why they believe that once the outline is done, it is written in stone.
Ray Bradbury, in his 2001 speech(An Evening with Ray Bradbury), which anyone can still watch (it's pretty funny and filled with gems of wisdom), talks about writers reading 1 short story per night, reading a classic piece of poetry, and writing a short essay., and 1 short story a week. Of course, for screenwriters, this is slightly different because the medium is different. But I think what Bradbury was getting at, at least in my own subjective take, is that no artist is an island, and that consumption of the arts is part of an artist's job to enrich their storehouse of influences and possible inspirations. (listen to Tarantino and Scorsese talk about films. Those guys watched a lot!) Watching a movie or reading a story daily for a writer and screenwriter is different than just someone trying to be entertained. In my opinion, it's just part of the process of becoming a better artist. Part of the job. How can an artist become better without studying the works of others?
Hey, for the record, I finished rewatching that 700 episode anime in 4 hours. You don't know me son.
Oh what a phenomenal video with a phenomenal topic.
The beginning is the best summary of what I've learned over the past few years, in my trials and tribulations with media consumption. Thank you
Your channel is incredible dude. It truly does challenge me and makes me uncomfortable in the most positive way possible
Babe new local just dropped 🙌
Sup
I agreement. And I gratefulness to you. You reminder me to be better.
I'm not even a gardener, I'm an architect, but I can tell you that I do feel the restriction that gardeners do. It's more like, I have an idea that's too broad with not enough detail, but I can't magically create scenes out of wholecloth to summarize.
Idea: I want my character to, somehow, be executed for her revolutionary actions because of (x earlier themes)
Great! Love it! How does that come to pass?
I'm someone who is very critical of media but all of my favorites are explicitly books and movies that make me EMOTIONAL. I don't really cry about events in stories or even like most romances at all, but I love the stuff that can induce those reactions. It's really hard to feel emotional about a character's choices or relationships when you're outlining and since I want to inspire emotion in others, some things have to be really spontaneous. If I'm not emotional, why would my reader be?
That's extremely specific though, I would really discourage a lot of people from favoring emotion in their writing. It kind of flips my statement on its head, "just because you're emotional doesn't mean your reader will be."
All of that stuff is propped up with the fact that I do outline, I will cut scenes mercilessly, and I do critique what I have written. A lot of my desire to write emotionally is a desire to be challenged.
Side note, I almost never rewatch anything but this video is finally rescuing me from watching season 1-8 of the Simpsons for the fourth time IN A ROW. Ay carumba.
OMG
YOUVE JUST GIVEN ME VALIDATION FOR EVERYTHING IVE STARTED DOING IN MY LAST 2 YEARS so that I can lead a life that I can be proud and hopeful of.
Id like to note, that half of my friends look at me like "What the hell". They cringe and judge me for, for example uninstalling youtube on my phone, because thats just my music and communication device.
And my father preaches, that I should stop using my analog notebooks and calendars, because its cheaper and more efficient.
I ended up thinking, that oooOOOoooooOoOoo IM SPECIAL.
I thought that the way I achieved good progress is entirely subjective to myself, but maybe I should start imposing your lessons onto the people I care for, whenever they start complaining about their life again, because I firmly believe in what you said.
I plan to write a graphic novel, and I'm trying to find that balance between knowing enough of how everything will act out from start to finish to be able to write it without problem, but still giving every character and scene enough of a chance to drive the story in their own direction in the case that may end up working better. Productivity is a huge struggle for me for a lot of the reasons you mentioned.
I always work in the privacy and comfort of my house because I have adhd so a lot of my brainstorming pretty much requires running around and pacing as a stim, and that's something I can't really get away with in a public Panera. I can't just sit still surrounded by millions of people or my mind will completely freeze up. I want to keep my phone around too just in case of emergencies. I'll see if I can find a balance between phoneless public Panera and all the distractions of a home.
Would you like advice?
Speaking as someone who isn’t just a writer your advice of changing your consumption to match your product is great. I also do game development and a project I’m working on is a survival game so I played survival games to see how they handle certain mechanics.
Funny, the thought of transforming my media consumption (at least partially) into an opportunity to learn and improve is what brought me here in the first place
I really want to say that you've opened my eyes so much ever since I discovered your channel. I am a big time procrastinator and I could never motivate myself out of this endless loop of lazing around consuming things instead of creating them like I've always wanted to. I love media and I can't deny that one of the best memories I have had in my life is from consuming media. Eventually, I want to get out of comfort zone and do cool shit. I will continue trying even if I have to keep failing. Thank you again.
Planning is essence of storytelling, you need the understanding of how to fit and balance all elements together. Make a blueprint before starting to build.
Hey local script man could you do a video on how to write multi-themed stories
i love the colorful lines in the back
One of the reasons I'm not a gardener is that I like being able to essentially bottle up my inspiration for later. The major problem with gardening/ pantsing is that you're relying on inspiration day-to-day to carry you through. But when I work on an outline for a book, I think to myself "Aha! An idea for later!" and I add it to the outline. In a single inspired day, I can plan, plan, plan, with ideas flying at me left and right. Then, on other days, I can take things easy and actually write what I came up with before. Whereas if I'd been a gardener, I would have one inspired writing session and then....a desert of un-inspiration. In other words, developing an outline can help counter the effects of writer's block. When you develop an outline, you don't suffer nearly as much.