Tomorrow (Wednesday) is the final day to back the Mistborn: House War board game Kickstarter campaign. All stretch goals have been unlocked, including an expansion covering the time period of The Well of Ascension called Mistborn: The Siege of Luthadel, which is now available as a $30 add-on.

The fifth installment of the 2016 Sanderson Lectures, “The Box,” is now live! If you missed last week’s episode, “World Building,” you can catch up on all the videos here. Enjoy!

In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, Elemental Thriller as a Subgenre, we look at the thriller element as part of a story whose principal driver is one of the other elemental genres. We consider some examples of blended-with-thrill stories, and then drill down a bit into how we can incorporate this in our own work.

Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Words of Radiance, our friends began to cope with a changed world in the aftermath of the great clash. This week, in Chapter 88, secrets come creeping out: the Ghostbloods, the Sons of Honor, the Skybreakers, and Shallan’s past.

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

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.

The new Elantris maps poster set is now available in my online store for those who have been asking. These maps were composed by Isaac Stewart for the 10th anniversary and leatherbound edition of Elantris.

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

In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, Futurism, with Trina Marie Phillips, she joins us at Phoenix Comicon to talk about her work as a futurist. Futurism, for those unfamiliar with our use of the term here, is related to science fiction, but it remains rooted in existing technology and trends, then seeks to be predictive in useful ways.

Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Words of Radiance, the secret societies began to reveal their purposes in aftershocks from the climax. This week, in Chapter 87, Adolin gets angry and the Radiants gather in conference.

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

For my European readers (or those of you interested in going to Italy this fall!) I will be in Italy at the end of October as the guest of honor at the Lucca Comics & Games Festival. I will announce my exact festival schedule once it is finalized. For more details check out my upcoming events page.

The sixth installment of the 2016 Sanderson Lectures, “The Business of Writing,” is now live! If you missed last week’s episode, “The Box,” you can catch up on all the videos here. Enjoy!

In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, Elemental Thriller Q&A, we fielded the following questions about the “Thriller” elemental genre from listeners on Facebook and Twitter:

• How do I build tension consistently through my story?
• How do you maintain tension during dialog?
• When do you not use a cliffhanger?
• Do you ever picture your scenes as if they were in a movie?
• How much elemental thriller is too much for a book that isn’t a thriller? What’s the tipping point where you’ve switched genres?
• What do you do when the tension in your story peaks too early?

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

The fourth installment of the 2016 Sanderson Lectures, “World Building,” is now live! If you missed last week’s episode, “The Illusionist Writer,” you can catch up on all the videos here. Enjoy!

In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, Impostor Syndrome, with Alyssa Wong, the Campbell Award nominee and Nebula Award winner joins us. Impostor Syndrome is the frame of mind that many successful writers suffer from, in which they worry that they’re not really good enough at writing to be enjoying their success. Worse, this mindset can prevent us from continuing to create. Many of us suffer from this, and we have some strategies to cope with it.

Update on the Mistborn: House War board game Kickstarter campaign: It’s now at 632% funded, and is working on the final listed stretch goal. Though I hear they have something up their sleeve for another stretch goal after that.

The third installment of the 2016 Sanderson Lectures, “The Illusionist Writer,” is now live! If you missed last week’s episode, “Cook vs. Chef,” you can catch up on all the videos here. Enjoy!

In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, The Elemental Thriller, we discuss the difference between the drivers in thrillers, horror stories, and mysteries, and use the elemental genre tools to assist in the differentiation. We also cover the tools we use to develop and maintain the tension that is so critical in a thriller.

Update on the Mistborn: House War board game Kickstarter campaign: It’s now at 530% funded, and is working on the 12th stretch goal.

Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Words of Radiance, Shallan evacuated the armies while Kaladin battled. This week, in Chapter 87, in the aftermath, they face rearrangement of the world as they knew it.

My assistant Adam has updated the Twitter post archive for June.

All,

Several years back, grad student Scott Ashton asked me if he could record my BYU lectures and post them for an online curriculum as part of a project he was doing. I said yes, and it was never supposed to be “a thing,” not really. It was a student doing a project, and using my lectures as a way to explore online education.

Well, since that time, those lectures (which are collected at Scott’s site, which he called Write About Dragons) have been viewed tens of thousands of times, and become one of the big hallmarks of my web presence, at least as far as writing education goes. I’ve been blown away by the reception to them. At the same time, I’ve been keenly aware that the recording was subpar. This isn’t Scott’s fault—he actually did an excellent job, considering his background. But the lectures are at times difficult to hear, and the filming was handled on a single amateur camera.

For years, I’ve been wanting to do something better. And this year I had my chance. My good friend Earl is a semiprofessional filmmaker, and was looking for a new project. I pitched a better-recorded set of lectures, filmed this year in my class, and he jumped at the idea.

I’m extremely pleased with how these turned out. I think the lectures have evolved over time in ways you’ll find useful, and the filming is top-notch. (No promises about the jokes though.) We’ll be releasing these at a pace of around one a week, and it is my hope for them to replace the previous series as the “canonical” version of my writing lectures online.

So, it is with great pleasure that I give you the 2016 Sanderson Lectures, with thanks to Earl Cahill and his assistants for their camera work and editing. (Earl’s company, Camera Panda, gets a shout-out as well.)

I hope you find them useful!

Brandon

I haven’t mentioned this year’s Writing Excuses retreat (September 17th–24th) very much, but I thought I’d drop a note about the impending price rise. Due the the cruise line’s requirements, May 31st is the last day to register at the current rate, and we hear it will go up quite significantly in June.

A few years ago, the Writing Excuses cohosts and I started holding the week-long Out of Excuses Writing Workshop and Retreat, which includes workshop and instruction time from Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, Howard Tayler, and me, as well as time to just sit down and write with (hopefully) few distractions. The retreat had a couple successful years in Chattanooga, and then last year’s retreat was moved to a cruise ship in the Caribbean.

The cruise version of the retreat proved to be very popular, and we arranged for additional writing instructors to come along. This year we’ll be joined as instructors by writers and publishing professionals Claudia Gray, DongWon Song, Tananarive Due, Steven Barnes, Desiree Burch, Lynne M. Thomas, Michael Damian Thomoas, and Navah Wolfe—in addition to Mary, Dan, Howard, and me. You can see a lot more details about the retreat cruise here.

For all the writers out there interested in attending, I look forward to seeing you in September!

All, I’ve been wanting to post reader mail responses more often, but it keeps falling through the cracks. Hopefully I’ll be able to make this more frequent in the future.

My assistant Peter received the following message and passed it on to me. The sender gave me permission to post the exchange here, but she and her friend asked for names not to be included.

I have a huge favor to ask of you. I just want to tell you a little bit about my best friend. [Name] is Brandon’s biggest fan. He raves about Sanderson’s work and got me into the Mistborn series.. Which was nothing short of extraordinary. [Name] is also a fantastic author—he emulates Brandon with his own voice and it’s truly astounding. Recently, he’s completely stopped writing because he’s afraid of what other people are going to think of his work. I don’t know if there’s any way to do this, but if Brandon could send me a little message that I could pass on to him—I think that would probably do the trick. [Name] is the best person I know and he has an incredibly story just waiting to be told. I’m willing to try whatever it takes to get that story out into the world.

Here is the message I wrote in response—and the same goes for anyone else who finds themselves in a similar situation, when you’re so anxious about what other people will think of your writing that it’s keeping you from continuing.

[Name],

I hear that you’re having some rough time in your writing, mainly related to worries over what people might say about it.

Dealing with insecurities like this is a very individual process, and so I don’t want to be presumptive and act like I have the answers. But if it helps, every author I’ve ever known has had these same feelings. I was so worried about it at first that I didn’t even tell my roommates—my very best friends—that I was writing books until I’d already finished three.

For me, the transformation happened slowly. But the more I wrote, the more confident I became—not in the writing itself, but in my enjoyment of it. In those early years, it mattered less and less what others thought, as I wasn’t writing the stories for them. I was writing because of the pure enjoyment I got from creation.

Putting this first made me much more able to accept the idea that people would be critical of my work—because that was secondary, like someone looking over my shoulder and commenting on my choice of dinners. If I’m enjoying the feast, what does it matter what someone else thinks of how I’m cutting the food?

As I said, this is individual. But my advice: Don’t treat the book or story you’re working on as the main product of your time writing. Instead, look at your enjoyment, fulfillment, and progress as a writer as the primary reasons you write.

Best of luck to you!

Brandon

It’s that time again, so I’m just going to post the same thing I did last year.

Many of you know that I teach a creative writing class at Brigham Young University once per year, Thursday evenings each Winter semester. As an undergraduate I took this class from David Farland when he was teaching it, and it was invaluable to me as a budding writer. When Dave moved on, I took over the class as I feel that it’s important to give back to the community and foster the next generation of great fantasy/science fiction writers.

As you can imagine, it has been a popular class that’s very difficult for students to register for—it often filled up on the first day of registration, and often only graduate students (who get to register earlier than undergraduates) would make it into the class. Starting last year we tried something different that worked well, so we’re continuing that this year. The class is broken into two parts—one class just for the lectures, and another class for the workshopping portion. The lecture class is open enrollment (both classes are only for registered daytime or evening students of Brigham Young University), and the workshopping class is by application only. As of today the lecture class is already full with a long waiting list, but I haven’t yet made any decisions on which applications I will accept for the workshopping class.

The application deadline for the workshopping class is Monday, December 22nd, and I’m mentioning it here in the blog because at this point not all that many applications have been submitted. My assistant Peter is wondering if everyone is waiting until the last minute, or if many prospective students think the competition will be too fierce.

Whatever the case may be, here’s your reminder, all BYU students who like writing fantasy and science fiction: the application deadline is Monday.