Robyn Paterson's Blog, page 7
June 23, 2020
The REAL Writing Masterclass – Brandon Sanderson’s Lecture Series
So, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m currently working my way through the Masterclass courses on writing. I’ve gone through most of the writers of both books and film they have available, and so far have found two clear must-listen winners – R.L. Stine and David Mamet, both of whom are both informative and entertaining in equal measure. But, even with these two masters of their craft, the courses are more a collection of vague writing theories and tips than actual classes taught by people who are g...
June 8, 2020
The 7 Minute Solution
Today, I was going through David Mamet’s Masterclass, and he came to a part I found fascinating during his discussion of his play American Buffalo.
He talked about how human beings have an “alertness” cycle built into them when they’re doing tasks that causes them to mentally take a moment to casually check their environment every seven minutes. Also, every twenty minutes into doing something, there’s a bigger mental break as humans fully stop what they’re doing to access their situation...
June 5, 2020
The (Classic Doyle) Whydunnit Formula
‘Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?’
‘To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.’
‘The dog did nothing in the night-time.’
‘That was the curious incident,’ remarked Sherlock Holmes.’― Arthur Conan Doyle, “Silver Blaze”
Things might not always go as planned, but there is always a reason why things happen. A whydunnit is a search for causes in order to understand the effects. Doyle wasn’t very concerned with motivation (most his criminals act simply fro...
June 4, 2020
The (Classic Doyle) Howdunnit Formula
Solving “impossible crimes” was one of the things Holmes was most famous for, and Doyle was fond of coming up with puzzles to challenge his great creation. In fact, a good way to think of a howdunnit is as it being a puzzle.
“How did the killer get in and out of the locked safe with guards around it?”
“How did the thief cover the distance between a party and the crime scene faster than a car can travel?”
“How did the victim die without leaving any evidence behind?”
The answers to...
June 3, 2020
The (Classic Doyle) Whodunnit Formula
Without a doubt, the whodunnit is the most popular type of mystery there is in modern culture, and if you read or watch a mystery story today, it’s probably a whodunnit. CSI? Whodunnit. The Mentalist? Whodunnit. Criminal Minds? Whodunnit. Detective Conan/Case Closed? Whodunnit. Murdoch Mysteries/Artful Detective? Whodunnit.
People love figuring out whodunnit!
Which is why it might come as a shock to you that most Sherlock Holmes stories, the paragon of mystery crime solving, aren’t w...
June 2, 2020
The Three Mysteries of Arthur Conan Doyle
While making my way through Stephen Fry’s astoundingly good Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection on Audible, I began to notice a pattern in Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories. Story after story in the collection tended to follow one of three different patterns, and after I started taking notes, I began to realize that these three patterns didn’t just apply to Holmes’ stories, but mysteries in general.
Using the language of mystery fans, I classify these three patterns as “whodunnits,” “ho...
June 1, 2020
The Psychology, Geography, and Architecture of Horror: How Places Creep Us Out
I found a fascinating paper on why certain things creep people out, which is invaluable information for writers of horror, suspense, and anyone else who wants to play their reader’s nerves like a fiddle.
Abstract
Why do some types of settings and some combinations of sensory information induce a sense of dread in humans? This article brings empirical evidence from psychological research to bear on the experience of horror, and explains why the tried-and-true horror devices intuitively empl...
May 5, 2020
Dan Brown Masterclass on Thrillers
I just finished going through the Dan Brown Masterclass on writing thrillers. Lots of good advice for new writers there, and a few little gems for me.
Im not going to write a full review, but I will say that Dan Browns background as a teacher really shows through. Hes thorough and methodical, and covers almost all the points that new writers would need to consider if they want to try to write standard thrillers. Its a good 3+ hour lecture with a professional who knows his craft that covers a...
April 14, 2020
Star Trek TV : By the Numbers
Recently, I found myself in a debate about the quality of different Star Trek TV series. and which one was better than the others. Being the data-minded individual I am, I decided to follow a reals over feels approach and collect some data to see what the real numbers were.
First, I threw the IMDB rating for each series into Excel and rendered it as a chart.
Thus we can see that fans liked Enterprise about as much (ratings wise) as they did The Animated Series but more than Discovery. Given...
February 29, 2020
Who is Reading YA Books?
I found some interesting reading on Reddit today in a thread from early 2019 that I thought was worth looking at. It’s very challenging to find actual data on the sex of Young Adult readerships since the publishers don’t seem inclined to share what they have and individual writers can only work with their reader surveys and collective wisdom.
The collective wisdom says boys stop reading at 14 and jump to fiction for adults if they continue to read at all. It’s definitely true that publishers...
