In the most recent Writing Excuses podcast episode, Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler, Dan Wells, and I talk about breaking the rules. We’ve said that you’ve got to learn the rules before you break them, so now it’s time to talk about why to break them.

Tomorrow I’m starting the second leg of my book tour, and Harriet McDougal will join me for many of the stops. Details on my events page.

Wed Feb 6: San Diego w/Harriet
Thu Feb 7: Los Angeles area w/Harriet
Fri Feb 8: Sacramento area w/Harriet
Sat Feb 9: San Francisco w/Harriet
Mon Feb 11: Portland area w/Harriet
Tue Feb 12: Seattle w/Harriet
Thu Feb 14: Vancouver, BC area
Fri Feb 15: Toronto
Sat Feb 16: Milford, NH
Mon Feb 18: Baltimore area w/Harriet
Tue Feb 19: Philadelphia w/Harriet
Wed Feb 20: Raleigh w/Harriet
Thu Feb 21: Atlanta area w/Harriet
Fri Feb 22: Birmingham, AL w/Harriet

I’ll also go to various conventions this year, and there are two or three book tours later this year that aren’t planned out yet. I’ll try to stop somewhere in Texas for the THE RITHMATIST tour in May, and I’m thinking of going to the UK around November or so. If you want to receive my newsletter, and get email reminders when I’ll be signing near you, tell me your city here.

I’ve uploaded the second video of me writing the Rysn interlude from the sequel to THE WAY OF KINGS. If you missed the first video with the prewriting, it’s here. This week’s video starts the interlude itself.

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

I teach a Creative Writing class at my Alma Mater, Brigham Young University each year. It’s always winter semester, one evening per week. It should generally be Thursday at 5:10pm but not necessarily. The class name is English 318R/321R

My class is split into two sections

1. Workshop class: ENGL 318R Sec 002 (15 seats, by application only)
In this class, in addition to the lectures, you will be split into writing groups and will critique writing samples from the students in the class. I will also read and critique your writing. Because of the time commitment for me, I have to limit this group to 15 people. You must complete the application to have a chance at getting into this section.

2. Lecture class: ENGL 321R Sec 002 (65 seats)
In order to allow more students to take the class, there is a section for students who will only attend the lectures. Many students in this section form their own writing groups to critique each other’s writing, but I will not be able to read and critique for these students.

Students who want to attend the lectures only should sign up for 321R Sec 002 when registration opens. That is also the class for students who want to audit.

Students who want to attend the lectures and complete the full workshop class should see the information on how to apply here.

Applications are due by mid-December, so you will be notified whether you were accepted after that date. If you need an ENGL 318 credit this semester you should, in addition to applying, sign up for English 321R and be prepared to drop that class if your application is accepted.

Many people ask me if there’s a trick to getting accepted into this class. I’ve asked my assistant Karen to judge the applications, so she’s going to answer that question.

Karen here. There are a few tricks to getting accepted, but mostly they’re just common sense. Because I have deadlines to meet in December (working on Oathbringer), I am going to be especially strict about the following requirements:

1. Fill out the application and follow the directions EXACTLY. That means that you should submit it before the cutoff date, and name your files exactly as requested in the application. If you don’t, I will reject your application without looking at it.

2. The writing sample should be the first chapter of your novel, and fit the wordcounts listed (2,000 words minimum, 10,000 words maximum). If it’s two short, I won’t be able to get a good sense of your writing skill. If it’s too long, I will just stop in the middle and reject your application for not following the rules. It’s best if you find a good stopping point within the wordcount limits.

Your first chapter is the hook of your novel. It may be the only thing that an editor or reader looks at. Make it something that will make me want more at the end of it.

After reading each writing sample, I’ll write myself a one sentence summary and give it a Good, Maybe, or No score.

3. I won’t look at the short answer questions before judging the writing samples. I generally end up with more than 15 ‘Good’ stories, and that’s when I take the short answers into account. A senior who has taken the lecture class before, has written three complete novels and listens to Writing Excuses is more likely to get accepted than a freshman who has not completed any novels or attended the lecture.

4. The essay will either confirm my previous impressions, or turn me off entirely. It’s all well and good to say that you feel your calling in life is to be an author, and that you’re committed to making a career of it, but if you haven’t put in the work of actually sitting down and completing a novel or two, then you’re not ready to get the full benefit of the workshop portion of this class.

5. Remember that if you are not accepted into the class, it does not mean that I’m rejecting you as a person or as an author. I only have 15 slots. There have been authors who applied one year, got rejected, but took the lecture class anyway, then applied the next year and were accepted because they had a few more pluses on their application, and more experience writing. I hope that you will take the lecture class no matter what your application status is, and that if your schedule permits, you apply again another year.

Good luck and good writing!

Brandon’s assistant Adam here. Due to the overwhelming number of people who request for Brandon to work on Oathbringer (Stormlight 3) and nothing else, I asked Brandon if he wouldn’t mind if I took the weekly update posts off his plate to give him more time to devote to the enormous writing endeavor that is the Stormlight Archive. Most of what you see on the website will continue to be written by Brandon, but he gave me leave to periodically post fanart and cosplays across his social media platforms alongside the weekly updates he likes to give to his readers.

The Weekly Update!

The final installment (a catch-all Q&A) of the 2016 Sanderson Lectures is now live! If you missed Episode 11, it was “Dialogue and Agents,” and you can catch up on all the videos here. Enjoy!

In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, The Editor’s Wish List, Navah Wolfe—an editor at Saga Press—sits down with the Writing Excuses crew to discuss the manuscripts she would like to see.

For those of you who followed Tor.com’s reread for Words of Radiance, which recently reached its conclusion, I have some exciting news for you: The great Alice Arneson just introduced Tor’s reread for Warbreaker, which will begin on Thursday.

Our own Isaac Stewart, cartographer extraordinaire and art director for Brandon, was recently interviewed for the Imaginary World Podcast. This particular episode, Fantasy Maps, talks about the debt modern cartographers owe to J.R.R. Tolkien, who spent decades mapping out Middle-earth on graph paper because everything had to be invented from scratch. It’s a fun podcast and well worth the listen.

The Twitter post archive for October is up to date.

There will be two Mistborn: House War board game playtests at Worldcon in Kansas City, August 18th (Thursday) and 21st (Sunday), run by Brandon’s literary agent, Joshua Bilmes. He has three copies of the game, so there will be 15 slots available in each session. Please sign up ahead of time for the Thursday or Sunday sessions. It looks like there’s no cost to join the playtests, but you must be a registered attending member of Worldcon (preregistration is over, but you can register at the door) in order to take part.

The eighth installment of the 2016 Sanderson Lectures, “Magic Systems,” is now live! If you missed last week’s episode, “Character,” you can catch up on all the videos here. Enjoy!

In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, The Element of Humor, we ask, what is the driving force that gets readers to turn pages in a book that is primarily a work of humor? More importantly, how do we as writers get that driver into our books? We cover this, and provide some starting points for writers seeking to improve their humor writing, along with a bunch of neat techniques and a long example for deconstruction.

Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Words of Radiance, a highprince met his fate and four Radiants gathered. This week, in Epilogue and What Comes Next, Wit expounds and [redacted] Elsecalls, as we conclude our discussions of this magnificent behemoth.

My assistant Adam has updated the Twitter post archive for July and August.

Hey, all! I’ve got some interesting tidbits about Stormlight Three to share, relating to what I’ve been writing this month.

Before we get to that, though, I do want to draw your attention to the items we have in the store. In addition to the Elantris leatherbound, as usual we’ve got most of my books for sale, signed and personalized, shipped to your door. This includes the brand new hardcover double of the novellas Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell and Perfect State, which we just put up. (We also have both Legion books, with new covers.) We also have a couple of new T-shirts, Mistborn and Stormlight lanyards, a new Roshar map poster, Bridge 4 jewelry, and all the usual fun stuff. Have a look! And do please note the holiday shipping deadlines!

It’s rare that I get to fully participate in National Novel Writing Month. (The month of November, for the uninitiated, is a kind of challenge month for writers. During November, participants try to complete fifty thousand words of material, which is roughly 200 pages.)

The true spirit of NaNoWriMo is to start a brand new story on the first of November, and write on it all month. The life of a professional novelist doesn’t lend itself well to this kind of schedule—you often have revisions due at inopportune times, or have to be on tour in November, etc. However, when I can, I like to participate in spirit by trying to write the 50k words—even if I don’t begin a new project at the start of the month.

This was a year where I was able to do this, as I had minimal touring this month (only two events) and no big revisions due. (Though my editor is still waiting on Alcatraz 5, which I’ll need to get to ASAP, now that the month is over.) It was a fun year to do NaNo though, as it was very nostalgic for me.

You see, thirteen years ago in 2002, I was doing NaNo as an unpublished author with many of my writer friends. We posted our wordcounts on a forum we all frequented, making a friendly competition of it. The book I was writing? The original draft of The Way of Kings.

One of the images from that time, burned into the back of my brain, is sitting in the guest room at my mother’s house on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, which fell very late in the month that year. That Saturday was the last day of NaNo—and I hit a frenzy of activity. While I hadn’t started a new project during the month (even then, I didn’t really need challenges like NaNo to get me moving on my writing) I was near the end of one.

I finished The Way of Kings that night, writing more in one day by far than I’d ever written up to that point—and more than I’ve ever written since. My wordcount ended up being so high that I severely underreported it on the forums, to not make others feel bad. (Which reminds me of the time when in high school, during the very early days of image manipulation before most people knew it was possible, I edited my report card to wipe away all my A grades and make them much lower—all to trick my mother.)

That time in 2002 was a special time for me, one I’ve talked about before. Writing The Way of Kings was a relieving experience for me, as I was writing exactly what I wanted rather than worrying about what the market wanted to read. I still feel it’s no coincidence that a year later I got my first book deal. After writing Kings, I was ready.

Well, this year I’ve been working on Oathbringer, the third volume of the Stormlight Archive. It was both nostalgic and exciting to be at my mother’s house again, thirteen years later, working with the same characters as a much more mature writer (and in a much more mature version of the world).

This month, I posted my wordcounts on Twitter and Facebook, rather than on a forum with my friends. I managed to get the 50,000 words done, though I didn’t have any crazy wordcount days. This may come as a surprise to some of you, but I’m actually much slower now than I was all those years ago. There is a lot more to watch for in these books now, a lot more continuity now that I’m actually releasing them for the public. The writing just doesn’t go as fast as it did when I was more carefree. That said, here are some quick facts about NaNo this year for me:

1. Writing 50k words in a month is still hard (in fact, it’s harder) as a professional. There are a lot of demands on my time these days aside from writing. Having a family is certainly one—but so is touring, answering emails, doing marketing meetings, talking to my agent, and signing huge stacks of books to fill orders from the store. (Not that I mind.)
2. Quality doesn’t suffer from adding a few extra hours of writing a day. I’d already known this, as there are times in the past when I’ve written longer than I do now. But it’s still nice to know. In fact, I’m more fond of many of the scenes I wrote this month than I am of many I wrote earlier. Which leads me to my next point.
3. Being very focused on one project, eliminating distractions, can really help me figure out tough scenes. This month reminded me of the days when I was first working on the Wheel of Time books—where I had a single-minded focus, and was determined to nail the project and do right by the fans. There’s a certain excitement to times like this, and I fully intend to keep this focus on Stormlight 3 as I roll forward. (I don’t have anything else I have to do, other than the revisions on Alcatraz, until Stormlight 3 is done.)
4. I really love these characters. There’s a reason I have been writing about Dalinar since I was fifteen—there’s something about him, a voice I need to share. It’s great to be back on Roshar, and I’m having a blast.

So where do we stand as this month ends? Well, I got my 50k, but the book is still sitting at only 137k words. That’s roughly 1/3 of the way completed—assuming it’s around the length of Words of Radiance, which I’m hoping will be the case. (I’m not sure how much longer Tor will let me go.) There’s still a great deal of work to do on this book.

I can’t really project a release date. Peter and Isaac have been very clear with me that we need more time for editing, revision, continuity, and art than we had on Words of Radiance. We’ll make a call on release dates sometime around when I turn the book in next spring or summer. It could be out next year, but Peter and Isaac want you all to be ready for a 2017 release instead. We’ll know more once I actually finish.

As for other projects, I’ll do my yearly State of the Sanderson post sometime around my birthday (otherwise known as Koloss Head-Munching Day) late December. That will catch you up on everything I’m doing.

Either way, I hope that those of you doing NaNo benefited from seeing my daily wordcount posts. Writers make up a grand (if somewhat neurotic) community, and I’m proud to be a card-carrying member.

Brandon

BONUS: I recently dug up the notes I took when submitting the first chapters of The Way of Kings to my graduate writing class while getting my Master’s. I’ll transcribe them here, though be warned, they were reading an earlier version of the book from the one that got released. In this draft, the opening chapter was a battlefield seen through Dalinar’s eyes, showing him and Adolin using their shards to defeat an enemy army.

CHAPTER ONE

• Compound words. They complained that there are a lot of them. (NOTE: Yup, I still use a lot of these! I think all the talk of Shardblades and Shardplate overwhelmed them.)
• They had a major gripe with the fact that there were a ton of characters to keep track of. It got really hard to keep track of who was who. They complained that I would introduce a character for a paragraph, then he would drop out. (NOTE: They weren’t ready for the “epic” part of “epic fantasy” I guess. To be fair, this original draft of KINGS did have too many viewpoint characters—but that was a problem for later in the book. These early scenes weren’t nearly as bad as the published version for keeping track of names. I’d love to see what the class would say about THIS version, with four different main characters in the first four scenes.)
• They liked it when I gave give a character a philosophy. Wanted to see that a little more. Also, they wanted more physical descriptions—they wanted to reconnect with characters through their physical characteristics. Wanted a physical quirk for everyone.
• They suggested I consider writing a piece with an adviser to the king. They think that the way I write would work well with a character like that. (NOTE: I have no idea what’s going on here. I’m assuming they were confused, and were suggesting a new character to be viewpoint to the sequence. This is why it’s best not to offer solutions to writers, only outline problems. I suspect that adding a new character, one who is not participating in the action but standing around describing everything, would not improve the book in the way the class thought.)
• They would like more of the big monsters. Chulls. (NOTE: Chulls were much larger in this draft, capable of pulling huge siege equipment. And really, who wouldn’t want to see more of that?)

CHAPTER TWO

• They liked this better, because I didn’t summarize as much and it had more action. They still wanted more visual details.
• Steve wanted to know more about the ‘nifty gadgets.’ Wanted me to flesh the ideas out. (NOTE: I think this references Shardblades and Shardplate, like the next note.)
• They ask: Where did the armor and swords come from? (NOTE: This is a good sign. It doesn’t mean I should answer it here; it just means they were curious, which is what I want.)
• Fighting styles were very cool—wondered if I could do more with it. They wonder if I could spent more time on the battle—a couple more chapters.
• Horse stuff. Hair on the hooves, black, stout forehead.
• 1. Give physical characteristics.
  2. Use more senses.
  3. More graspable feel of the world’s battle tactics and philosophies.
• Blood in mouth from biting tongue.

There you go! A glimpse back in time to before I’d sold any books. It was always an interesting experience submitting my work to these graduate courses, as nobody really knew what to do with me. Professors would tell me not to write fantasy, and I would anyway, telling them to fail me if they thought it was bad. Students would have critique sessions where for one piece, they’d discuss some short and obtuse poem—then move on to this enormous (and maybe obtuse) epic fantasy novel.

Don’t get me wrong—I loved being in the program, and felt it was well worth my time. But the critique sessions could sometimes go interesting places.

The Words of Radiance audiobook is now available for preorder on Audible in the US, as well as on CD via the links at the right. Kate Reading and Michael Kramer are well into recording the narration, and it will be released the same day as the hardcover and ebook.

The final version of Michael Whelan’s cover art has been revealed, and you can download desktop wallpapers on Tor.com to go along with the Shallan endpaper wallpaper (I know some people with dual monitor setups are using both!).

More chapter previews have been released; the final batch is coming on Tuesday. Here are the previews released so far:

• Lift interlude
• Prologue, chapter 1, chapter 2
• Chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 5
• Chapter 6, chapter 8, chapter 9

Tor.com has also been doing a series of reread posts for The Way of Kings. If you want to refresh your memory and theorize with other readers before the second book comes out, consider giving it a look.

Last Friday I did a live writing session to benefit the Waygate Foundation and Worldbuilders. The session was recorded and you can see it here. Thanks to everyone who donated and who gave suggestions in the chat during the recording!

My assistant Peter has uploaded a couple more Twitter archive posts, for November and December.

Writing Excuses—the Hugo Award-winning writing advice show that I host alongside Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler—has been absent from the iTunes podcast listings for a few weeks for some unknown reason. But now it’s back and you can subscribe (for free) here. Or you can listen to the episodes at the website, or download the mp3s from the link at the bottom of each post and listen however you like. If you have some other way you subscribe to podcasts, the direct feed link is here.

The following are the most recent episodes we’ve released. Each is around 15 minutes long, so they get to the point and don’t take a huge bite out of your day:

• “You Think You Don’t Have Time to Write” with Mette Ivie Harrison
• “Chronology of a Book Deal” with Eric James Stone
• “Hard Science Fiction” with Eric James Stone
• “Character Perception vs Narrative Perception” with Nancy Fulda

The Out of Excuses writing retreat and workshop that we’re putting on in September/October sold out in about three minutes, but in partnership with the Carl Brandon Society we are offering a scholarship for one slot. For more details, see Mary’s explanation here.

Worldbuilders hit its goal, so we’re going to give this write-a-thon thing a try. I’ve settled on this Friday, January 17th, from 2:00 p.m. Mountain time until 7:00 p.m.

If you missed the blog post explaining this, I go into detail here. However, the short of it is this: I’m going to stream myself writing for those hours, and will take your suggestions on what to do. We’ll write a story together, and I’ll also answer questions about whatever. The streaming service we’re going to use is Justin.tv on the Waygate Foundation channel, since if any of you have Twitch.tv accounts they will work there. [EDIT: Whoops! It looks like Justin.tv accounts can log onto Twitch.tv, but Twitch accounts can’t log onto Justin for some bizarre reason. You’ll have to make a new account, it appears. Sorry! We checked one way, but not the other.]

As I said before, I’m uncertain how this is going to go. I think it will be fun, but I don’t know if what we devise for a story will be any good at all. We’ll see. This is all for charity anyway, and I do intend to try to raise some more money for Worldbuilders as we go. Really, the only way this can be a bad experience is if nobody shows up.

So, if you’ve got some time on Friday and have any curiosity regarding my writing process, please stop by. It shouldn’t require any special setup on your part, unless you want to ask questions or give suggestions for the story, whereupon you’ll need an account. (You can make one here.)

See you on Friday!

Brandon

This past weekend I had a great time at JordanCon. Next year‘s Author Guest of Honor will be Patrick Rothfuss, with Artist Guest of Honor Larry Elmore. It should be awesome.

While I was there I signed a number of books for two booksellers, The Missing Volume and Basement Books. They each also have a handful of copies of my Firstborn/Defending Elysium convention exclusive—but I forgot to sign those. Whoops. Still, if you’re not at a con, this is the only way to get your hands on that hardcover until much later this year. Both booksellers will ship to you.

The Missing Volume
Raleigh, NC
Email: info@themissingvolume.com
Phone: 321-297-6635
Plenty of signed copies of The Emperor’s Soul and one signed copy of a number of other hardcovers and paperbacks such as The Alloy of Law, Wheel of Time books, and The Way of Kings. Inquire for details.

Basement Books
Email: tsbooks@mindspring.com
Phone: 770-849-9659
20 signed copies of Legion (very hard to find elsewhere!), a few signed 1st editions of Warbreaker, copies of The Alloy of Law triple-signed by Brandon, Ben, & Isaac, signed copies of The Emperor’s Soul.

The latest Writing Excuses podcast is another brainstorming episode, where Mary, Howard, and Dan help me come up with ideas for a story about psychic birds. Enjoy. And yes, I did end up writing this story (a novelette) after doing the podcast. More on that in the future.

Tor.com has put up another two chapters of their reread of THE WAY OF KINGS: chapters 3 and 4. This covers Shallan’s introduction and Kaladin’s arrival at the Shattered Plains.

If you missed my AMA at Reddit, you can find my answers here.

I’ve finished uploading the videos of me writing one of the interludes from WORDS OF RADIANCE, the sequel to THE WAY OF KINGS. I’ve also made a high-speed version of all of the writing, which you can see below, if the real-time version was too slow for you. There’s a playlist of all of the real-time videos here, and the final video (if you were keeping up already) is here.

This has been a bit of an experiment, to show my writing process. Now that it’s all done, what have you thought about the experiment?

I’m doing a Reddit AMA (ask me anything) right now at /r/fantasy. Ask away.

This week’s Writing Excuses podcast episode talks about narrative rhythm.

Here’s the penultimate video of me writing the Rysn interlude from WORDS OF RADIANCE, the next Stormlight book. Next week I’ll put up the conclusion and the sped-up version with everything in one video.