zmunkz

I think that sounds awesome! But as with most things, it will come down to execution. It took Brandon over a decade before he was able to write a marketable book, and a further decade before he was able to get Way of Kings to work. Maybe you should start with a handful of short stories set in these realms, and work your way up to the main stories.

What’s the premise?

Brandon Sanderson posted his 2018 year-in-review, and it includes several interesting tidbits about the state of several potential tv / movie deals with his properties (including Mistborn... possible movie series! And Stormlight... possible tv series!). He then gives out some interesting nuggets about WoT: https://brandonsanderson.com/state-of-the-sanderson-2018/ Well, I am hyped!

I think from a greenlight to an airing can be several years, but I am not sure.

I agree with the above. Just write more, and you’ll get a sense of the style you already have. Once you become comfortable with that style (and it doesn’t, for instance, change to match the style of the last book you read) you can play to your strengths and tell stories more naturally. i don’t think it is something to specifically seek or to worry about, really. It just comes out as you write more and gain intuition of your own storytelling.

I strongly agree with this, and your reasoning for it.

The character growth issue is a good one. Perhaps consolidating the events would work rather than cutting it out. I could imagine including the bowl of the winds, but still leaving out the Atha'an. Perhaps the Kin could fill their place (though that wouldn't hold up to scrutiny in quite the same way). Definitely need the Kin in there... someone is going to have a very tough job of this.

I like this. I think season 1-5, and 10, as outlined, work perfectly. 6-9, though, I think will need more adaptation for television. I doubt they'll plan for 10 seasons, but who knows. We know the series will need to cut things (all do), and if I were so charged... I would remove the entire Bowl of the Winds sequence and the Atha'an Miere. The story arcs can be handled without either of those added layers of complexity/worldbuilding IMO. If they need to tighten it even more, I fear Perrin Aybara and his wolf dream would go next. His arc stays fairly separated from the major strokes, and the way in which it ties back in at the end could be handled by someone else, saving a lot of character development and detour (I hope they come up with a better solution than that, though). I also wouldn't be surprised if the Forsaken get consolidated into a chosen (hehe) few representing the bunch. I think the overall plot only demands Lanfear, Asmodean, and then one or two others consolidated from the lot. The black tower is a tricky one. It remains too-much in the background for too long in the books, and that won't convert well to TV... and yet, you definitely can't cut that out. They'll need to do something clever there. I could see this go very wrong if the people making these decisions aren't very familiar with the source material, or are otherwise not capable of stitching up the holes they'll have to create while whittling the story into a screenplay. Anyone know if Brandon Sanderson is to be involved?

This particular forum caters a little less to writers, and more to Brandon's cosmere. There are a few sites out there that are great for that kind of thing, my favorites being: fantasy-writers.org (I'm actually a moderator over there, and we'd love to have you); sffchronicles.com (larger community, and many are successful career writers), or scribophile.com (far less personal than the other two, but also by far the largest site for this kind of thing). But stick around here too, so you can geek out with the rest of us about Brandon, lol.

I can relate to the both parts of that concern. Not much to be done about that second issue, though, as little as 2 hours a week on a Saturday afternoon can get you going. As to the first issue, I encourage you to try it anyway. I've found, once the story begins to coalesce into something real, it becomes much more exciting than the ephemeral amorphous form it takes in the head. You might surprise yourself.

Welcome! The Writing Excuses podcasts are really excellent (as are Brandon's YT videos, if you haven't seen them... search my YT channel "zmunk" for a mirror). The original four were (I believe): Brandon Sanderson Mary Robinette Kowal https://www.writingexcuses.com/about-2/marys-bio/ Howard Taylor https://www.writingexcuses.com/about-2/howards-bio/ Dan Wells https://www.writingexcuses.com/about-2/dans-bio/ You might know Dan Wells for the "7-point structure" for stories, as that is pretty popular even outside the podcast. They've had other visiting and recurring guests in the last few years, but I don't know them all.

As the author, you just have to convince us that is how it works, and we'll believe you. I think @Belzedar has described the reality of it, but an author can easily sell something that isn't quite true. Take Shallan, as an example (if you've read Stormlight). She has suppressed memories of the sort that probably don't really exist. She just stops herself from thinking about certain things when the line of thought is approaching something she doesn't want to remember. If your character feels himself getting to close to certain dark memories, and decides to get hammered to take the edge off so he stops introspecting, that works just fine. People won't worry about if the character technically must remember those things in order to block himself.... If it fits the personality of the character, your readers will go with it.

My own advice would be to look for connections between your different ideas… Points of conflict. If you can find things that work together and create friction, it will improve your ability to tell a compelling story. I also suggest that you make sure your first book really holds its own in terms of cool ideas. Don’t hold off your best stuff for later, or you risk losing readers before they ever get to see them. As for characters and even magic systems, Brandon’s advice from his YouTube lectures is to take what you have and dig deeper before you consider adding something new. I think that is pretty sage advice myself.

This is slightly tangential to Writing Excuses, but certainly in the same family. I've collected all of Brandon's creative writing lectures into one place on YouTube, and together they make quite the resource/crash course for aspiring writers. He covers topics from prose to worldbuilding to the business of writing. I also did my best to add some value by applying basic color correction, some audio enhancement (for 2014 in particular), wrote out some notes, transcribed the whiteboard (for the 2106 series), and combined videos that were previously chopped into parts. ( ...and I didn't monetize anything, of course...) Check them all out here: Or, you can navigate to my channel and I have playlists of each series separated out. It is really amazing that Brandon shares all this stuff... it is pure gold. He is as good a teacher as he is a writer, and that is saying something. Anyway, I hope this resource helps someone as much as it has helped me!

Welcome Do you find yourself more in the Mistborn camp or the Stormlight camp, if you had to choose? I'm curious since I read his stuff in the reverse order to you.