(Video at bottom.)

I am a big proponent of a good balance in life. And this can be hard to do as a writer. Because a lot of you who want to write professionally, by necessity, have to have another job. When I took this class back in 2000, one of the things Dave (Wolverton) said is there are a lot of people in the writing community that will tell you that you shouldn’t have a family, for instance, because having a family will distract you from your writing, or you will be a bad family member because of your writing. And he said this is a fallacy and self-fulfilling prophecy. This does happen because they expect it to and because they have bad work habits. And I agree with him 100%. I think having a good family who is supportive of you in your writing is going to be infinitely more valuable to you than you can even imagine. You need to have passion for life to write passionate books, and you need to have a cheering section.

Now, there are some issues you want to be aware of. When I was newly published, I remember an event that happened that’s always stuck with me. I went out to dinner with some writer friends. This would have been Brandon Mull and Shannon Hale. And Mull and Shannon and me and our spouses were there. It was actually at Mama Chu’s restaurant, if any of you know that, in Utah Valley. And we had this wonderful, very exciting sort of meeting of minds. Mull and Shannon are two of my favorite people ever. They are fantastic writers. (I love how people mistake Brandon Mull and me for each other and occasionally show up in the wrong line. And we both will good-naturedly sign the other’s book when that happens.) But it was just was wonderful.

And I got to the end of this dinner, and on the way home I said to my wife, “Wasn’t that the most amazing thing ever?” This was one of my first meetings like this with other authors. And she said, “You didn’t look at me one time the entire night. I felt like I wasn’t there.”

Yes. (Pretty bad.)

And this was an eye-opener for me. Because I got married, by this community’s standards, later in life. I was 30, which is, like, ancient in Utah County terms. For our foreign readers, you might be like, “You got married that early? What’s wrong with you?” Because I’ve noticed in Europe, especially, they do tend to have a later marriage age. Around here, it tends to be a lot faster. And I was used to writing dominating my life because I did not have any family stuff, which is really important and really valuable. I just didn’t have it. I wanted it. I didn’t get it till later in life. And I had to realize that once I had other people in my life that I cared about to that extent, I couldn’t let writing dominate that.

Writing is something that can dominate every waking moment of your life if you’ll let it. A friend of mine, Howard Taylor, loves to use the joke, he’s very good with these, that goes, “It’s great being self-employed because you only have to work half days, and you get to decide which 12 hours that is.” It is true. This isn’t the only job like this. There are lots of jobs like this. But writing is one of those that if you let it, it will consume everything. This can be really dangerous. This can lead to everything being about you and nothing being about your loved ones, everything being about the writing. This can be very helpful as well because you can use off moments that other people might waste, like on a commute, thinking about your stories and working on them. It can be a very handy thing.

Emily and I had to work out some things, mostly issues with me dealing with this. And one of them was the realization that when I’m with her, I need to actually be with her. I can’t be on Roshar. I can’t be on Scadrial. I have to make sure that I’m there for my wife during those times. And in turn, one thing that I would tell you to try to explain to your loved ones is that you need uninterrupted writing time when it’s writing time.

This is not the case for every writer. But for most writers I know, you usually have a warm-up period and a cool-down period for your writing session. Which means that it takes you a little while to get into it, then you have a really productive section in the middle, and then you get finished with whatever scene you were working on, and you start to cool down. And if you still have writing time, you will then spin back up into another section or scene and then spin down again.

Getting interrupted in the middle of this really productive time can be catastrophic for a lot of writers. Even just a small thing that your spouse might think is not a big distraction at all, just saying, “Hey, what do you want for dinner?” can pull you out of that and can interrupt the flow, that instead of a 10-second interruption it can turn into another 30-minute interruption as you start spinning down naturally because you’ve been interrupted. And then you have to try to force yourself to spin back up. Learning how to spin up and down faster is something you can practice, but it’s not something every writer can do.

So, I recommend a kind of trade. Where you go to your loved ones and you learn how to make sure you are there for them during family time, and you wall that time off in your brain, and you’re not allowed to be thinking about your stories during that time. And in turn, you make your loved ones the guardians of your writing time, whatever that is you have in your life, where they’re going to make sure that nobody interrupts you during those important moments, that you have your two hours uninterrupted so that you aren’t getting a phone call in the middle of that, or the person coming to want to do pest control, or whatever it is, that you have that time.

What I do in my life is two writing sessions. I need about a two- to four-hour chunk. Anything less than that, and I generally can’t work on new prose for a chapter because of that spin up and spin down. I can do other things. I can outline. I can edit. But I can’t work on new prose unless I’ve got at least two hours. I like three or four. Usually, when everything is on, things have been a little off for COVID, but I usually get up at noon or 1:00 and write from 1:00 until 5:00, a four-hour chunk. At 5:00 I stop, and 5:00 until 10:00 is family time for me. And that is walled off. I don’t work on books, even in the back of my brain. It’s got to be a really steep wall for me to make sure I am there for them. And I have to mentally say, “You are there for them.” When your kids ask you to do something, that’s the time you say, “Yes, I’m going to go do that.”

There are things that’ll interrupt that. This class is one of them. But on a normal day, that time should be theirs. And then I go back to work at 10:00 after everybody goes to bed, theoretically (children are children). And I write from 10:00 until 2:00, and then 2:00 until 4:00 is goof-off time for me. Video game, reading a book, listening to a podcast, whatever it is I feel like doing, assuming I’ve met my word count goals and things like that.

This may not work for you, but I hope that some of these ideas help you with understanding this. I will reiterate what Dave said. A family and time away from your books is actually going to be really important for you not burning out, for you having things to write about, and for you keeping that good balance in your life. It’s much tougher when you can’t write full time like me, I understand that. But just take that to heart and hopefully it’ll be useful to you.

(Adam here. If you’ve been following Brandon’s YouTube channel recently, you will have noticed some pearls of wisdom many of Brandon’s videos contain. Well, I’ve decided to take transcripts of those sections—only slightly edited from his speaking—and make them a bit more widely available.)

Brandon’s wife Emily here. I was recently on one of Brandon’s livestreams where I was asked for advice in regards to being married to an author or creator. The below is the (edited for reading) answer I gave during the livestream. If you’d rather watch it than read it, you can scroll to the bottom where we’ve embedded it into the website, or you can watch it on YouTube here. Either way, I hope that our advice can help a few of you out there who may be struggling with this.

First off, it’s a wild ride. Also, this advice isn’t intended to be a solution for everyone because all writers’ careers are different and their writing styles are different, but I think being married—or partnered—to anyone who makes their living in a creative way, you have to learn to communicate well.

For example: I don’t want to get in the way of Brandon’s creative process, but at the same time, it’s important that he be a husband and a father and all those other things too. So, figuring out—preferably beforehand—that this is family time, this is us time, this is writing time, etc. Figuring out a balance that works for both of you, then making it explicit, makes a big difference.

You have to decide what your role is as far as being a critique person too. I know spouses of writers who don’t read their partner’s work at all, and their spouse doesn’t want them to. (I would be really sad if Brandon didn’t let me read his books, because I love them.) For others, their spouse is their foremost critique person and they want them to give them hard, honest, critique. Others still, would be like, “No, I need you to be the cheerleader. I need you to be the person that tells me the good. There are other people that will tell me what’s wrong. You tell me what’s good about it.”

It’s important to figure out between the two of you. What does your spouse need you to do? And are you okay with that? So I would say that clear communication—used to set future expectations—is the primary advice I’d offer. The next bit of advice is to find other people who are in a similar situation and ask questions. That’s what I did and we seemed to get things figured out. Often by the seat of our pants and sometimes to our detriment, but we eventually got it sorted and I know you can too.

Emily

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

I, not so recently, got an email asking me the following question. I hope my response will be useful to my fellow writers. You can read my last FAQ Friday post here.

Question: I’m absolutely in love with the world I’ve created and have spent years in its building—magic systems, political systems, cultures, races, etc.—but I feel it is not original enough to warrant publication. I have, to a certain extent, trapped myself in the tropes of fantasy—mid to late 13th-century setting, races based off the classics of orcs, dwarves, and elves, and unwittingly I created a nation of people who I fear will be compared to the Seanchan in their intent, if not their culture.

The storyline itself is very original (with the exception of the Seanchan-esque nation), and the few people I’ve spoken to about it have said it sounds exciting.

So I guess my concern is this: do you think I have a legitimate concern in that my work may be perceived as unoriginal and therefore not worth publication? Or can writing style and an original storyline make up for that fact? (Question sent by J. Hirz)

My experience has been that writers worry about this more than they should. Now, that’s not to say we shouldn’t worry about it at all—but generally, readers are a little more forgiving of us showing our influences than we think they will be. The Wheel of Time has some very Tolkien- and Herbert-inspired sections, and is generally considered to be a highly original setting, even if it’s true that the Aiel are inspired by the Fremen.

Harry Potter wasn’t actually that original an idea; wizard schools have been a staple of middle-grade fantasy for years. But her combination of everything together was amazing. So I think you can absolutely take tried-and-tested, well-worn tropes and combine them into something that is greater than the sum of the parts.

My suggestion to you is to write the book. I think that, because you’re aware of this possible problem, you’ll naturally take it in different directions. Then give the book to some readers and try very hard not to predispose them toward what your fears are. After they read the book, let them give you feedback. If a lot of them are saying it feels derivative, maybe see if you can make some things more your own. However, most likely they’ll say something like, “This feels like the Seanchan, but in a good way.”

We are all inspired by the things we read, watch, and love. Learning to take this inspiration and make it into something newly yours is part of the process of becoming a writer. Give yourself that chance, and I think you’ll find a balance you like.

Brandon

It’s been a few weeks since my last FAQ Friday post about the need to start books with a prologue, as my travel schedule has been quite extensive as of late. As before, this post will take the same format as the previous one, where my answer is written in direct response to the original questioner. But as always, I hope it can help my fellow writers who have the same question.

Question: As a beginner, I would like to ask your advice on how to narrow that gap between my storytelling and story writing. (I have watched your online lectures on fantasy and sci-fi writing). Question from P. Lavy

You phrase this in a great way, as the writing and the storytelling are two distinct skills that often intertwine.

Reading into your question, I think that what you’re asking is how to make the things in your head (the storytelling) work on the page (the story writing). I have to warn you, however, that a lot of times there’s a little more going on than I might have mentioned in my lectures.

The metaphor I often use in the lecture is how, as an early trumpet player, I could hear some music I wanted to play in my head (specifically when doing improvised jazz) but didn’t yet have the skill to make those sounds come out the front of the horn. This is a good metaphor, but it leaves something unsaid.

A lot of writers can imagine a perfect story, but then have trouble writing it down. My experience tells me, however, that much of the time, that story isn’t actually perfect in our heads. We pretend it is because we can’t see the problems with it when we’re imagining it—we gloss over the difficulties, the issues that are quite real but invisible until we actually try to put the thing together on the page.

So you have two potential problems. One is that the story in your head isn’t, and never was, as flawless as you imagined. The second is that your skill in writing isn’t up to telling the things that ARE working in your head. Both are eventually resolved through practice.

To finally get around to some practical advice like you wanted, however, there are a couple of ways to bridge this gap. One is to practice outlining. Now, I’ve often been clear that there is no one right way to write a story, and non-outlining methods are valid. However, if you really want to start looking at the structure of your story critically, forcing yourself to outline it first can really help. Plus, one big advantage of a solid outline is that you’re able to keep less in your head while working for the day. You can look at the outline, know what story beats need to be accomplished, and focus your mental energy on things like showing instead of telling and really nailing character voice/motivations instead of worrying if this plot point will end up working or not.

These fundamentals are another really great way to bridge that gap. Few new writers fail because they lack vision, originality, or ambition. They fail because it is difficult to write a character that is compelling. Or they fail because it’s tough to evoke a sense of wonder in exploring a new world while at the same time not bog the story down with unnecessary details. Practicing things like voice, showing instead of telling, and evoking setting through character can let you make the page-by-page writing interesting and compelling, which then serves to make your story work long enough for you to get to the grand ideas.

Brandon

You may have seen my first post of this nature a few weeks ago addressing the elephant in the writer’s room about the nagging feeling of dissatisfaction about the previous day’s efforts. This post will take the same format as the last, where my answer is written in direct response to the original questioner, but, as always, I hope it can help one of my fellow writers who may have the same question at heart.

Question: You talked about the prologue and the promise. I am a discovery writer by the way, but sometimes I like to walk outside while listening to epic music to get inspired. The thing is that I don´t really feel comfortable doing a prologue because that could spoil a little bit the story. However, I am concerned about the readers. If I don´t make a prologue and I start with chapter one… well, of course, it will not be that interesting as the magical battle or evil growing on the prologue.

So what should I do? Spoil a little bit? Or just start showing my character from 0. I’ve had this dilemma for a while. I can assure you, Mr. Sanderson, that my story is going to be epic and different from the conventional. Just mindblowing. Transcendental. It will have a lot of scaling so I have to start from 0. But how can I lure my readers on the first pages without spoilers? (Question from A. Martinez)

Well, I’m proud to have been able to chat with you before you make it big! I like how you talk and how you think. Stay confident, but also to be willing to listen to feedback and criticism. If you want to become the great writer you dream of being, you do so (in my experience) by listening.

As for prologues, I should say that you certainly do not need them. In fact, many authors use them as a crutch. It is perfectly acceptable (even recommended by some editors I know) to skip the prologue and go right into your story. (Though it’s not something I often do myself, so perhaps this is a “do as I say, not as I do” sort of situation.)

The important part is not what you call your opening, but in making certain your opening is making the right kinds of promises. You say you want to start at zero and ramp up–that’s great, and you can totally do that. But try to devise an opening to your story that is engaging, and gives foreshadowing of the type of story you want to tell. Figure out how to start small, but make big promises. Some stories do this with a prologue. But other stories start with the protagonist trying something bold and beyond their skill, to show that they are challenging themselves–and this can be something as simple as running a foot race, or boldly speaking when others remain silent. It doesn’t have to actually include something epic to imply epic turns are coming.

Best of luck to you! I suggest just starting where it makes the most sense, then writing your story. Once you are done, you can look back at that opening and see if there are revisions you could make to better align it with the story you ended up wanting to tell.

Best,

Brandon

As I’m sure you can imagine, I get queried quite frequently about writing advice. Occasionally, when responding to these emailed requests, I see an opportunity to respond to the writing community at large. So, while my answer is written in direct response to the sender, I hope it can help other writers who may be struggling with the same question.

Question: Whenever I write, I have all the inspiration and stuff to do so and I know what I want to write. But when I come back to what I have written the next day or so, that feeling of inspiration and satisfaction that I had when I was writing goes away and I feel unsatisfied with what I have written. I have great ideas that I think are great, but sometimes I don’t think they are great anymore. Often times I re-write it, but the situation is a continuous loop. Any advice? (Question from A. Worland)

This is a common sort of attitude, and you are not alone. Writers tend to fall into two camps, I’ve found. The people who think their writing is terrible while writing it, but then discover it’s not so bad afterward—and the people who think it’s great while writing it, but then look back and find it disappoints them. I don’t think either attitude is 100% correct, but I can understand both.

What I see happening here (as an off-the-cuff diagnosis not knowing you enough to do a detailed and specific one) is that your ability to see a perfect and wonderful book in your head is not yet matched by your actual writing skill. You’ve likely read a lot of books, and have developed a very discerning eye for what works and what doesn’t in fiction. You feel like you should be able to produce that great fiction, therefore.

But you’re like a person who has become an expert in tasting cheese—that doesn’t mean you can make your own. You have an advantage over someone else, but you still have to put in the work to learn the process of cheese making. Here, you’re comparing the perfect version of the book in your head (or, perhaps, the published books you’re reading) to the first draft, unpracticed work you’ve written.

The challenge here is to recognize your first draft doesn’t have to match a published finished draft. Beyond that, you’re going to grow a lot as a new writer as you finish your first few books—to the point that you will often be much better as a writer by the end of a sequence than you were at the start.

In all these cases, however, the solution is the same: keep your eye on the goal. Finish that story. You can’t learn to do endings until you practice them. Learn to let yourself be bad at something long enough to be good at it. This is an essential step many artists have to take. You can and will make that story better, but you need to finish it first.

Brandon

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