Happy Birthday, Brent Weeks, born 7 March 1977.
Quotes
- If you worry about what everyone is trying to do, you become a spectator and not a player.
- Delusional people tend to believe in what they’re doing.
- You might want to think twice before you try to use a man’s conscience against him. It may turn out he doesn’t have one.
- What people value in their books—and thus what they count as literature—really tells you more about them than it does about the book.
- You will find no answers here, just choices.
- Write what you’re passionate about. I wouldn’t model your hero on yourself, though some people do that–but I would give her some traits that hook into your own deepest fears.
- There’s a thousand other great writing tips, but generally, do what works for you. Try different things and keep doing whatever it is that helps you get words on the page.
- The story is what matters. You should introduce worldbuilding as it becomes pertinent to the story. Obviously you want to seed some of the worldbuilding earlier so it can pay off later, and you want to fill in enough of the details about the world so it doesn’t seem like your characters are wandering through a fog, disembodied, talking and fighting with each other, but the world should be introduced as its important.
- Write regularly even when you don’t feel like writing, even if it’s just a little bit every day.
- Sometimes, you won’t really know what the book is about until you actually get done with the first draft. But you can’t polish what isn’t here yet. So you have to write that crappy first draft, even if it is crappy. And trust me, it probably will be crappy.
- Write to the most fascinating dilemmas and the hardest points and the things you’re most passionate about and the things you’re most terrified of. Keep going to those places, and keep making it worse. If you do that, who knows, maybe that first draft will practically write itself.
- Some people like to figure out everything their character is going to do for the whole book. Other people just write from day to day, not knowing what’s going to happen next. Most people are a mix of both.
Brent Weeks is an American fantasy writer. He is the author of The Way of Shadows, the first book in The Night Angel Trilogy, which has been printed in 10 different languages.
Source for quotes 1-5 / Source for quotes 6-7 / Source for quote 8 / source for quotes 9-11 / Source for image: Brent’s assistant, photo credit: Garrett Beatty/Nuro Photography
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