This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode covers film considerations, and Mary Robinette Kowal and Dave Wolverton/David Farland join Dan and Howard to discuss the topic. Appropriately, this episode was also filmed by Moses Siregar III of Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing, and the video is up
. The most recent WARBREAKER annotation covers Siri bullying Treledees and getting her hair color under control. It also explains something about the God King's tongue that's a big spoiler to anyone who
Hugo Award nomination season began this month, so I thought I'd let you know what categories my works are eligible in. If you don't know what the Hugo Awards are or how nominating and voting works, I also talk about that below. If you want to nominate, the registration deadline is January 31st. (You can also use this list when considering nominations for any other award that's out there, but for the purposes of this post I'm focusing on the Hugos.)
ELIGIBLE IN CATEGORY: BEST RELATED WORK
Wri
This week's episode of Writing Excuses is one of those that was recorded during the Superstars Writing Seminar, and it's on alternate history. I was doing a panel at the time, but Eric Flint and Mary Robinette Kowal were there with Howard and Dan to shed light on the topic. Check it out!
The newest WARBREAKER annotation covers Vivenna begging on the street. I also talk about influences from Les Misérables, which you may have noticed.
And there's yet another collection of my recent Twitter po
In this week's Writing Excuses podcast episode, Dan, Howard, and I go over more dialogue writing exercises. By the way, we recorded seven great episodes at this past weekend's Superstars Writing Seminar, with guests Sherrilyn Kenyon, Kevin J. Anderson, Eric Flint, David Farland, and Mary Robinette Kowal, so you have those to look forward to. The next seminar will be in April 2012 in Las Vegas (the weekend and venue should be nailed down this week), and early bird pricing is available.
The most
In this week's Writing Excuses episode, we talk about fulfilling promises to your readers, and we give specific examples from our own stories and others'.
The most recent WARBREAKER annotation covers Vivenna's character arc hitting rock bottom. I also talk about how to give your Breath away one at a time.
Tor.com put out an open call for questions for me a while back, and today they put up the first batch of answers. Warning: contains spoilers for TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT, THE WAY OF KINGS, MISTBO
As I stated in a blog post in the early fall, I took the months of September–December inclusive off from major projects. I do this to give myself some breathing room creatively and work on projects I don’t have a contract for. I also like to do writing exercises, try new things, and generally relax and let myself be creative without deadlines or expectations.
Sometimes the projects I work on during times like this turn out really well. Sometimes they flop hardcore. Often it’s something in betw
BrandonSandrson Tue Dec 14 You guys want to do a writing exercise together? I've been wanting to do some dialogue practice. We could each do 5 pages on a theme, and...
BrandonSandrson Tue Dec 14 ...and I could post my five for you to see, then look at some of the better ones on writing excuses and talk over strengths/weaknesses.
BrandonSandrson Tue Dec 14 Write a 5-10 page two character dialogue with no tags or blocking. Dialogue only. Try to evoke character, conflict, and plot with this onl
This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode with Dan Wells and Howard Tayler is called Offending Your Readers—and specifically covers various ways you might offend your readers and how to avoid it.
The most recent WARBREAKER annotation is about chapter 36, which is one of the most flirtatious and calm of the Siri chapters. It also talks about Susebron's taste buds.
Finally, THE WAY OF KINGS is officially out in the UK now, including the ebook. So if you're in the UK and have been waiting to
Here's the schedule of panels for the next Superstars Writing Seminar, which will be held in Salt Lake City this coming month. As you can see from the list of topics, this three-day seminar is packed with great stuff, no-nonsense and practical material taught by six bestselling authors.
Sessions begin in three weeks. If you've signed up already, I'll see you there! If not, now's a good time to sign up.
THURSDAY
8:30 AMIntro, seminar overview, introduce speakers (Kevin) 9:00Econ 201 for Wr
For those who are following along, here's what I did for my writing exercise. I actually managed to make it something of a self-contained story. If you want to read up on the rules, I posted them here. We did some analysis of other people's writing on Writing Excuses here. If you did one of these and want more feedback, you might be able to post it in the Writing Group section of the TWG Forums and get some feedback. (Or you might be able to read some other posts and let people know what you tho
There are two new interviews with me out there. First is this one at The Fringe, which covers some familiar ground with a few new questions. And then here's one at Stormblessed, which sheds some new light on details in THE WAY OF KINGS.
Both THE WAY OF KINGS and TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT are on the long nominees list for the 2010/2011 David Gemmell Legend Award. Last year, THE GATHERING STORM and WARBREAKER were both voted into the short list and ended up losing the final ballot to EMPIRE by Graham M
The most recent WARBREAKER annotation covers Lightsong's line, "My dear, did you just try to prove the existence of God with your cleavage?" among other topics. You may notice a bit of a slowdown in annotations from this point forward; weeks where only one annotation gets posted will be more common. The reason for this is that I'm running out of material, and I haven't yet written the annotations for THE WAY OF KINGS. (I'll do that after I finish writing A MEMORY OF LIGHT, during a reread in pre
You guys want to do a writing exercise together? I've been wanting to do some dialogue practice. We could each do five pages on a theme, and I could post my five for you to see, then look at some of the better ones on Writing Excuses and talk over strengths/weaknesses.
Write a five- to ten-page two-character dialogue with no tags or blocking. Try to evoke character, conflict, and plot using only dialogue. Include: a problem, two distinct individuals, a fantasy/sf element. Avoid: long monologue
BrandonSandrson Thu Dec 02 Yes, "mistborn" on reddit is me. I can't respond to everyone, but--like on twitter and Facebook--I should be able to reply once in a while.
joelcorriveau Thu Dec 02@BrandonSandrson "A Making" got me choked up. As a 20-something, spinning my wheels, testing/resisting my destiny. #ToM has been hearty.
BrandonSandrson Thu Dec 02 @joelcorriveau Thank you.
17thshard Wed Dec 01@PeterAhlstrom @BrandonSandrson Has the title of Scribbler been changed to "The Rithmatist
Writing Excuses has been nominated for a Podcast Award in the Education category. We're up against stiff competition from the likes of Radio Lab and Grammar Girl, so if you think we'd be a deserving recipient, go over there and vote. Apparently you can vote once every day, and the voting deadline is Wednesday, December 15th, at midnight.
In the most recent episode of the aforementioned award-nominated podcast, Howard Tayler, Dan Wells, and I offer writing advice to our younger selves, includin
Peter here. Brandon's other assistant Becky wanted me to make one more blog post about signed book shipping. So that books shipped inside the U.S. by Priority Mail may arrive in time for Christmas, all orders must be in by midnight the night of December 12th. Becky will get Brandon to sign everything the next day, after which she will ship all orders.
She'll also ship out standard Media Mail orders at that time, but Christmas Eve delivery on those can't be guaranteed. And it's basically too la
Do you have a question for me? Tor.com is soliciting questions for the next three days which they'll then compile and send my way. I'm also taking questions on Goodreads's Fantasy Book Club this month. They have one thread for questions about THE WAY OF KINGS and another thread for TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT. I'll probably start answering them this week.
The Dragons & Fairy Tales bookstore has a 30% off sale on all Brandon Sanderson books through December 17th. They have copies of almost all of my
One important bit of news is that the fourth Alcatraz book, ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE SHATTERED LENS, was released officially in stores this week. I had reports of it being found on store shelves as early as last week, maybe even the week before. So it’s around.
I’m very proud of this book. I think it’s the best in the series so far. You may remember a tweet from me a while back about a book where the dialogue in one chapter is entirely quotes from Shakespeare. That’s this book. It’s off-the-wall,
BrandonSandrson Sun Nov 21 It occurs to me that I need a new acronym for the new Mistborn book. Otherwise, my next two books could be MAoL and AMoL...
egonegative Fri Nov 19@BrandonSandrson Wikipedia says WoK is going to be a 10 book series. Is that true?
BrandonSandrson Sun Nov 21 @egonegative Yes, that is true.
staceydroach Fri Nov 19Just finished #TofM @BrandonSandrson it was awesome!
BrandonSandrson Sun Nov 21 @staceydroach Thanks!
BrandonSandrson Mon Nov 22 If you reported
