What? That has to be a joke, right? Nope. Brandon Sanderson teaches (or at least taught) writing at BYU, and the school decided to put the 2014 classes online for all to see. That basically means that you can watch a free novel writing class a la Brandon Sanderson (as well as a handful of guest lecturers).

Just to prove that I’m serious, here’s the first lecture:

There are 14 of those. Each one is over an hour long, and while they’re pretty sweet resources for a writer (being free and all), I can see where the idea of watching all of them might be overwhelming.

If you’ve never had a novel writing class, you might want to watch all of them. Novel writing classes are useful, so I’d recommend everyone take one once. If you’ve had one already, there’ll be a lot of overlap, so you may want to skip around to lectures with topics you’re interested in at the moment.

That’s why I’ve made the outline below and provided times so that you can skip straight to the lecture or a topic.

Outline of Brandon Sanderson’s Free Novel Writing Class

As a general outline, the class starts with the art of writing and finishes with the business of writing. It’s a little hard to hear up to lecture 7 when he starts using a mic, but with decent speakers, you shouldn’t have a problem hearing him so much as student questions (and since they don’t wear mics, that doesn’t change).

Here you go!

Lecture 1: Introduction to the Class

This lecture is mostly an intro to the class work (syllabus, etc.) but some interesting points on his idea of writing and how to help writers as well as the main idea of his class. How the workshops should work (descriptive, not prescriptive).

6:46 – Lecture Starts (more or less)

58:18 – Detailed outline writing versus discovery writing

Lecture 2: Class Overview 2 and Parts of a Story

Intro to the Class / Motivational Speech @ What to Expect from His Class (Artist, Craftsperson, & Businessperson: Freedom of Expression versus Practical Tools)

7:02 Lecture Starts

Plot, Setting, and Characters (3 basic pieces of the plot held together by the glue that is the conflict). Overview

17:46 – Brainstorming – starting with four characters

Lecture 3: Prose Intro

The audio is not quite as good (little harder to hear).

01:00 Lecture Starts

Prose & Style is what first hooks the reader/editor: character, setting, and plot are what keeps them.

• Learning Curve for the reader (difficulty of names, difference of world to reality)
• Archetypes
• Query – get 1 idea across really well  (really shallow learning curve)

19:14 Viewpoint – one of the main things to sell book in a couple of pages. Should be a conscious choice and utilized. Discusses the pros and cons of the two main viewpoints.

Lecture 4: Plot Intro

0:00 Quick overview of writing gatherings

2:27 Q&A: wild original ideas, natural dialogue v. plan, make self fall back in love with story, can you use cliches properly,

19:26 Lecture Starts – what makes people read a book and related writing methods.

Lecture 5: Characters Intro

0:48 Q&A: pacing a chapter, proof of concept, discuss with other authors before writing, chapter shopping, and making magic systems seem believable.

19:12 Lecture Starts

3 Areas of Making Characters People Want To Read About (his method of talking about it). Show one of these 3 in chapter 1.

1. Active
2. Competent
3. Likeable

Lecture 6: Setting Intro

1:41 Q&A: good description (put off til next week), planning something large scale, and switching characters in 1^st person point of view

12:26 Setting discussion starts (why no formulas/fewer formulas

20:07 Setting lecture starts: guideline for worldbuilding

Lecture 7: Prose II (More Advanced)

In this one, he starts using a mic, so he is much clearer.

2:17 Q&A: get stuck writing, fill in gaps between powerful climactic scenes, revising,

11:15 Polishing Draft and Editing Drafts (mini lecture in response to question)

20:40 Q&A resumes: ever not finish a book, how to end / just finish it (awful ending or not), do new character voices, writing rituals, and how to do conflict if character is deity/all-powerful (ask Howard about this).

31:40 Prose Lecture Starts

General concepts:

• window pane prose
• stained glass prose
• pyramid of abstraction

51:32 Infodump guidelines

Lesson 8: Prose Revision Exercise

2:27 Q&A: how to develop a character without obvious obstacles/stubborn character/reveal characterization subtly?,  book releases (timing to get #1 on bestseller lists, co-ops, & book sales), writing books specifically to improve an element of his writing, how long to become great writer (figure out what works for you),  self-publishing, and online writing groups yes/no?.

21:42 Prose Revision Exercise starts

Lesson 9: Guest Lecture by ____ on Short Fiction

The recording starts after the introduction, and I was unable to find the name of the speaker. If anyone knows, please, pass it on so that I can update this.

0:00 Recommended sites to read and listen to (starts in the middle of them)

He takes questions as he goes and covers many different aspects of short fiction (from writing tips to publishing tips).

1:28 Short Fiction lecture starts

28:24 Plotting – his recipe for a story

Lesson 10: Guest Lecture by Janci Patterson  on YA

She does discussion and questions throughout instead of at the beginning or end.

1:59 Lecture about young adult fiction begins (audience expectations, character, mechanics, pace, etc.)

24:46 “If I could teach you one thing about teenage characters – if I could go back and tell myself this ten years ago – this is the thing that I would want you to take away today.”

Lesson 11: Guest Lecture by Howard Tayler on newspaper comic strip structure & humor

00:30 Introduction

4:08 Comedy Formulas

• The comic drop
• Surprising Yet Inevitable
• Clever Cute Bizarre Cruel Naughty Recognizable
• Interrupted Defense Mechanism

26:23 Knocking you out of the story (or not) with comedy

Lesson 12: How the Traditional Publishing Business Works

3:05 Lecture starts with a writer’s rights (keeping as many as possible)

13:40 What publishers provide

23:27 Advances

37:42 Breakdown of cost and profit of a book and where it goes

55:25 Brief discussion of hybrid approach (between trad and self-publishing)

Lecture 13: Meeting Editors, Contracts (YA, adult novel, movie/tv), and Self-publishing with Joe

There are some sound issues at the beginning.

3:25 Lecture Starts

Getting published (process and how-to)

34:18 Publishing Companies in detail, starting with “The Big 6” (now the big 5) and other names they publish under

52:30 self-publishing discussion led by Joe

Lecture 14: Self-publishing, Agents, and Taxes

The sound is off at first.

8:51 Lecture starts with self-publishing

19:36 Agents

44:39 Taxes through agents then more about agents

51:47 Taxes for writers

1:05:55 Q&A

The End.