Brandon’s assistant Karen here.

Brandon has asked me to judge the applications for his English 318r class and choose the 15 writers who will be in his small group workshops. This year I will only be considering the first 65 applications I receive. Based on the last few years, I will probably get that many in the first two or three days, so you should make sure you are ready to hit send on the 23rd.

If you’re looking for hints about how to put together an application that will impress me, you can check out this FAQ article. TLDR: Treat this application as if you are submitting your novel to an editor for publication. The most important hint is to follow the directions EXACTLY. I will not even look at your writing sample if you don’t have both files attached to your email with the EXACT names and formats I request.

Today I’m going to put the nuts and bolts aside and talk about the writing samples.

Judging the writing samples is a tough job. If you read science fiction or fantasy, you may be familiar with the steep learning curve at the start of a new book. In other genres, you have to learn the names of the characters, and figure out where and when the novel is set. The names will probably be ones you’ve heard before, and so are easy to pronounce in your head. The setting is probably also familiar: America in the 1980s, or France during World War II for instance. Even if you didn’t live in those times and places, you probably have a lot of background knowledge, so when the Nazis show up, you don’t have to be told the complete history of the last hundred years to know that they’re the bad guys.

In a fantasy novel, the names are often not Bob or Sue. They might be easy or hard (or impossible) to pronounce. You might spend the first part of the book thinking of someone as simply that guy whose name starts with Jq’. The setting is probably also not one you’re familiar with. It might be a fairly simple setting like faux medieval Europe, though the kingdoms and politics are not ours, or it could be set on the surface of a neutron star with characters that are essentially very smart amoebas. Then there’s the magic system. Is it something anybody can use? What kind of powers are available? What does it cost to cast spells? Does our main character even know that magic exists? You can see that in order to enjoy a fantasy novel, you have to figure out the answers to all of these questions fairly quickly.

Now imagine that as soon as you start to get your bearings, the first chapter ends and you need to put the book down and start over again with a new book, new setting, new characters, new historical backstory, new magic system, etc. And in twenty minutes or so, you get to do it again, and again, and again. By the time I’ve finished a day of reading, my brain is mush, and after a couple of days, I can’t even remember what any given book is about, let alone whether it’s any good.

If you’ve read this far, you might be wondering what you have to do in order to make your sample stick out in my head as a good one while I’m wading through the pile of slush. When I said that you should treat this application as if you were submitting your novel to an editor for publication, I meant that literally. This is how it works in the field of professional publishing.

The key, other than just writing really well, is to not turn me off. Knowing that I have a limited amount of mental energy to devote to this task, I’m not going to waste my time on something that I know will not make the cut. You have two, maybe three pages to convince me that I ought to keep reading. Use them well. Here are some things that are nearly always going to get your story rejected.

• • Grammar problems – I will stop reading after about the third mistake. There’s no excuse for this. If you aren’t confident about your ability to do a thorough proofread, have someone you trust help you.
  • Boring start – I get that you want to show how exciting it is for your character to leave their life behind and answer the call to adventure, but I don’t want to read about a day spent twiddling their thumbs at school.
  • Amateur pitfalls – Don’t have your character look in the mirror so that you can have an excuse to describe them. Don’t have a maid and butler scene where people tell each other things they both know in order to explain them to the reader.
  • Purple prose – If the gentle breeze kisses the raven locks on the knight’s noble brow as she gazes forlornly at the twisting smoke emerging from the crimson embers of her dying campfire, I’m going to put the book down in less than a page. You don’t need an adjective every other word, and I shouldn’t feel like you’re writing with a thesaurus in your hand.
  • White room – You do have to have some description. I need to be able to tell whether your characters are in a forest or a basement as they discuss their plans.

People have asked me, “If you see this many errors in my writing, doesn’t that mean that I’m the one who most needs to be accepted into this class?” The answer is no. This is advice you can get from books or the lecture portion of the class. Brandon’s time is much better spent helping excellent authors take their writing to the next level, and we have enough of those apply that the fifteen slots I have really ought to go to them.

I don’t want this to stop anyone from applying. I hope that people will read this advice and use it to make sure that they’re sending me their very best work. I also want to stress that I only have fifteen slots. I have to reject good stories every year, and it breaks my heart to send out the letters to the candidates who weren’t accepted. Brandon wishes that he could help every one of you, but if you want the next Stormlight book to come out sometime in the next ten years, he’s got to ration his time.

Good luck, and good writing,
Karen

Brandon’s assistant Karen here. It’s that time again—time to send in your applications for Brandon’s Winter 2018 English 318R class. We’re going to do things a bit differently this year, so I’ll go over the changes before I go into the details of how to apply.

Because the number of submissions is becoming unwieldy, this year we’re only going to consider the first 65 applications. That means that you cannot wait until 11:59 p.m. on the due date before you hit send. If you are serious about taking this class, you’ll get the application in early.

In theory, applicants should have a novel or two, or at least the first few chapters of a novel, already sitting around. You ought to spend a couple hours proofreading and giving it a once-over edit. Then take about 30 minutes on the application and essay question and hit send. So there should be little need for anyone to take two months to get it ready.

You can submit applications from October 23 until December 20. You’ll need to send me the first chapter of your novel and the application form found here. Follow the directions on that form exactly including filenames and subject line. Remember that you need to be a BYU student—but you can also sign up as a Continuing Education student or Evening Classes student. If you just want to take this one class, register as a student here.

As usual, the English 318R class is limited to the 15 people chosen from among applicants. Everyone is also encouraged to sign up for Brandon’s English 321R section, which is the lecture-only portion of Brandon’s class. Students who have taken the 321R portion in previous years will get some priority for 318R in future years.

For bonus reading, some hints on how to get accepted can be found here, and you might find my wrap-up blog post from last year interesting as well.

Karen

Hi all, Karen here.

I’ve just finished reading and evaluating the applications for Brandon’s English 318R class at BYU. For those of you who don’t know, Brandon teaches a creative writing class each winter semester. The lecture portion of the class (English 321R) is open to as many students as can fit into the auditorium, and many of the lectures have been posted online for those who can’t attend in Provo.

The main thing students are graded on is whether they complete 30,000 words of the beginning of a novel during the semester, submitting chapters each week. Brandon encourages students in his lecture class to form writing groups to read and comment on their classmates’ work. The students who are accepted into the 318R workshop class are divided into three groups, and Brandon rotates among them each week, reading the submissions and giving feedback. Because of time constraints, he can only give this personal attention to fifteen students each year.

In order to spend his time and energy where it will do the most good, Brandon has asked me to decide which of the applicants is in the best place in their authorial development to get high-level feedback on their writing craft. It doesn’t help anybody if he has to say things like, “I really couldn’t understand what was going on in this chapter,” or, “Your grammar needs so much work that it overshadows your plot.”

You may think that I’m exaggerating here, but I’m honestly not. Each year, most of the submissions we receive are from enthusiastic applicants whose writing shows that it needs a great deal of work before it will be at a level where Brandon’s individual attention will be helpful. We also get some pretty fabulous submissions each year, and I’m always excited to find them. I have even been known to ask for more of the novel just because I want to read more of it. Some of the students who pass through this class are so well prepared that they go on to publish within just a few years.

Here’s a quick rundown of how the application process works. First I read each submission and write a quick summary and my first impression of the skill level of the writer. Each story gets a grade of yes, maybe, or no. Then I read the applications, and take into account what year each applicant is in school, whether they’ve taken the lecture portion before, and how many novels they have finished. After that, I narrow it down to the fifteen finalists, and send out the good (and bad) news. If you want more details on this process and hints for getting accepted, see the FAQ page.

Most of the submissions arrive in the last few days before the late December deadline, so I do almost all of the reading between Christmas and New Year’s. With all of the regular holiday stresses, I’m often rather grumpy this time of year. Reading fiction that needs so much work makes me even grumpier, so I try to smash the whole process into a couple of very grumpy days (I am exaggerating a bit here; it’s not really that bad). When I worked at BYU’s Leading Edge magazine with Brandon and my (then future) husband Peter among others, we called this sort of reading “wading through the slush pile,” and I think it’s an appropriate activity for some of the darkest, coldest days of the waning year. (Regarding those submissions that arrive well ahead of the deadline, I’m able to review those in a more relaxed and less stressful setting.)

The hardest part of the process is not actually the reading of submissions. Even the ones I dislike for one reason or another have some redeeming qualities—an interesting plot, relatable characters, imaginative settings, and so on. The hardest part is reading the applications’ short essays knowing I’m going to have to reject most of the authors. Almost all of them say something like, “I love writing, and want to devote my life to it. I owe so much to the authors who have inspired me that I want to give back to the community by writing great fiction.” I’m seldom reminded as strongly that my friends and I are living the dream of a career in the publishing world than when I see how many writers out there are still dreaming.

That’s why in every rejection letter I send, I include the hope that those writers will continue writing, continue learning to improve, and continue sharing their work. And in fact, each year I receive and accept applications from students who have applied and been rejected in the past, but have a much better submission the second or third time around.

I’ll end with a few statistics you may find interesting:

• We had 72 submissions this year (though two of those were late, and were rejected without being read).
• There were 39 women and 31 men (I guessed from the names, so this might not be quite accurate).
• After my first impressions, among the submissions there were 9 automatic passes, 40 automatic rejections, and 21 maybes.
• By far, most of the submissions (45) were from seniors, plus 13 Continuing Ed students, 2 law school students, 3 grad students, 10 juniors, 7 sophomores, and 1 freshman.
• Applicants reported a total of 139 finished novels, with the most prolific author clocking in at a whopping 16.

Congratulations to the students who were accepted, and good luck in the future to those who didn’t make it in this year.