Studying Never Stops

One of the reasons I fell in love with writing is that I can always find something new to learn. I love, love, love, learning new things. 

I got super lucky, someone posted a link to a free lecture series on one of the writing subreddits I follow. It is a creative writing lecture series at BYU that focuses on Science Fiction and Fantasy, taught by Brandon Sanderson.

I am enjoying it. There is so much good information. As much as I do by instinct or self-study, this has been very helpful. 

Anyone interested in watching the lecture series, here is the link:

I will warn you the first video (posted here) is the introduction to the series, and you mainly get to know Sanderson. The technical stuff starts in the second video with Promise, Progress, and Payoff in the plot. I'm currently in the third video, which is specifically looking at Plot Outlines.

So far I have been a discovery writer (someone who develops the plot while writing, with little or no outline). It is interesting to see the outlining method explained. I could definitely adapt a few of these techniques, but like he says in the first video, discovery writers write in order to solve the problem, so if they solve the problem before they write, they get bored because they've already solved it!

But I'll be honest, I have 222 pages of the first draft written, and I feel like I'm somewhere around the middle. But I'm fairly certain I know how it is all going to end!