In The Demons’ Head: James Patterson Masterclass Review Pt. 1
July 15, 2016
Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of In The Demons’ Head. Today starts a six week span where I’ll be breaking down a couple of really great tools that have become available to writer’s in recent times, the first one is a “Class” taught by best selling author James Patterson. The second is an in depth course that basically teaches the user how to use another extremely useful program called Learn Scrivener Fast.
July 15, 2016
Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of In The Demons’ Head. Today starts a six week span where I’ll be breaking down a couple of really great tools that have become available to writer’s in recent times, the first one is a “Class” taught by best selling author James Patterson. The second is an in depth course that basically teaches the user how to use another extremely useful program called Learn Scrivener Fast.
The James Patterson Class will be my focus for the next couple of weeks. I break dow the entire 22 lesson structure of the class as I retake it so that I can take notes on it. Because to be completely honest I didn’t take notes the first time around because I completely suck at thinking ahead apparently.
Either way, this course popped up for me on a paid advertisement through Facebook and thought at the time why not take a look at it. I needed something to really get me re-interested, and re-invigorated, and re-focused on writing and for some reason I thought that maybe this would be the tool to do that. In a way it kind of did and in a way it didn’t.
The first thing I noticed as I took this class was that the “lessons” were nothing more then a directed video trying to express how James himself writes. Now, I’ll never knock James Patterson. The man has in fact figured out something that few writers do and that’s a way to make 100 million dollars in a single year. But the more I looked through the masterclass the more I questioned the 99 dollar investment. The discussion boards were the closest thing you got a constructive feedback and a majority of the time that wasn’t what it was used for. Plus, getting people to react, or respond to your post were completely random in most cases it seemed like.
There are 22 lessons and they range from creating ideas, to writing a first draft, to editing, to publishing. The class itself spans a hell of a list of topics and for the most part they are in decent bite sized videos. There are a few of the videos that are considerably longer then others but for the most part should you want to (though it isn’t recommended by James) You could finish the class in an afternoon, maybe even a weekend if you stretched it out a little.
With that said, let’s break down the first 11 lessons here which ranged from an introduction, to plot, to first lines, to creating characters, to dialogue.
I did the first 4, including the introduction and I’ve noticed that now that I’m taking notes, and kind of paying a little better attention, it turns out that there are some small nuggets here that could be of use to me. In the first four lessons, I filled up about a page in the composition book that I keep my writer’s notes in. I stopped there the first night due to the fact that it was late and intended to pick it up again the next morning.
I worked my way through modules 5-11 over the course of a couple of days. In those modules he discussed a lot of different things from outlining, to first drafts, to first lines and blank pages. As I stated above I have to give the course this much, it does help a lot more and tends to be more effective if you take notes.
The one thing that I noticed a lot in the first half of this course is how pernicious Patterson sounds. I don’t have the right to criticize the man whose obviously doing better at this writing profession then I am but I have a hard time stomaching some of the way that he says things while discussing topics in the videos. On the same token it’s almost like while he does stick to the topic for the most part there are some instances where it seems like he’s gone off onto a rant for no reason other then just to talk about things that he himself have experienced.
We’ll see how the second-half of the course goes as for next weeks’ post I’ll be working my way through lessons 12-22 and giving my final thoughts on the class overall.
Until next time be sure to follow me on Twitter, give me a like on Facebook, join my mailing list, where you’ll get free monthly updates and some free writings as well. Until the next time you want to take a trip through the gates of hell and into the demons’ head, I’m Kyle Robinson wishing you a safe trip back to the surface.
Either way, this course popped up for me on a paid advertisement through Facebook and thought at the time why not take a look at it. I needed something to really get me re-interested, and re-invigorated, and re-focused on writing and for some reason I thought that maybe this would be the tool to do that. In a way it kind of did and in a way it didn’t.
The first thing I noticed as I took this class was that the “lessons” were nothing more then a directed video trying to express how James himself writes. Now, I’ll never knock James Patterson. The man has in fact figured out something that few writers do and that’s a way to make 100 million dollars in a single year. But the more I looked through the masterclass the more I questioned the 99 dollar investment. The discussion boards were the closest thing you got a constructive feedback and a majority of the time that wasn’t what it was used for. Plus, getting people to react, or respond to your post were completely random in most cases it seemed like.
There are 22 lessons and they range from creating ideas, to writing a first draft, to editing, to publishing. The class itself spans a hell of a list of topics and for the most part they are in decent bite sized videos. There are a few of the videos that are considerably longer then others but for the most part should you want to (though it isn’t recommended by James) You could finish the class in an afternoon, maybe even a weekend if you stretched it out a little.
With that said, let’s break down the first 11 lessons here which ranged from an introduction, to plot, to first lines, to creating characters, to dialogue.
I did the first 4, including the introduction and I’ve noticed that now that I’m taking notes, and kind of paying a little better attention, it turns out that there are some small nuggets here that could be of use to me. In the first four lessons, I filled up about a page in the composition book that I keep my writer’s notes in. I stopped there the first night due to the fact that it was late and intended to pick it up again the next morning.
I worked my way through modules 5-11 over the course of a couple of days. In those modules he discussed a lot of different things from outlining, to first drafts, to first lines and blank pages. As I stated above I have to give the course this much, it does help a lot more and tends to be more effective if you take notes.
The one thing that I noticed a lot in the first half of this course is how pernicious Patterson sounds. I don’t have the right to criticize the man whose obviously doing better at this writing profession then I am but I have a hard time stomaching some of the way that he says things while discussing topics in the videos. On the same token it’s almost like while he does stick to the topic for the most part there are some instances where it seems like he’s gone off onto a rant for no reason other then just to talk about things that he himself have experienced.
We’ll see how the second-half of the course goes as for next weeks’ post I’ll be working my way through lessons 12-22 and giving my final thoughts on the class overall.
Until next time be sure to follow me on Twitter, give me a like on Facebook, join my mailing list, where you’ll get free monthly updates and some free writings as well. Until the next time you want to take a trip through the gates of hell and into the demons’ head, I’m Kyle Robinson wishing you a safe trip back to the surface.