Unexpected Craft Resource

We all know how hard it is finding any information about writing that’s not basic-beginner, or one person’s “one true path” on how to write. So I was surprised when I found something useful at a more advanced level on, of all places, Writer’s Digest.

They have a number of videos for sale, and more importantly, bundles of videos (you want those if you can because you get more videos. If one isn’t useful, you’re likely to find something else that is). Even the bundles are very affordable (at least right now; I’m not sure if this is a sale or not).

The first to check out is World Building Foundations The Art of Restraint is the video I purchased the bundle for. That’s what I’m working on in my writing. The author spends a lot of time describing how George Lucas dealt with the technology in Star Wars, which was pretty interesting. In fact, I’m reading a series that’s followed a lot of the principles he describes.

Digestible World Building suggests certain types of scenes that are shortcuts to building the world. The editor also discusses tags (doesn’t call them tags). The thing that struck me as I watched this one was that without knowing Depth, it would be very hard to implement any of this in a meaningful way. No wonder I had trouble with world building! I was missing the foundation.

The second is Researching Your Fiction or Non-Fiction Book, also another bundle. I have not watched any videos in this yet. Again, a bunch of different videos, including researching to submit stories. I got this because research is always a good topic to learn about, especially when different viewpoints are presented.