How fast does Sanderson write?

[Alfa he/him]

Yesterday (15.06.2017) the 4th and 5th draft of Oathbringer were at 96% progress. Today (16.06.2017) copyedit review is at 67%. Strikes me as incredibly fast. How does he do it...?

[Felt he/him]

Multiple things are going on at the same time, he doesn't finish a draft and start the copy edit, but while finishing it other people are working on the next fase... 

Can't wait for November!!!! 

[Riceloft he/him]

Right, Peter is doing the copyedits and has probably been trailing behind Brandon as he completes the final draft.

[Islington]

As a general comment, very freaking fast. He's said in interviews that he writes when he's stressed, when he has free time for fun, and as his job. He also treats it like a job, writing (or doing writing adjacent things) up to eight hours a day sometimes. He writes like he sold his bone marrow for it. 

Compare to others; 

Martin- I'm not a fan in general after the last couple books, but he generally writes pretty slowly. But, his books are exactly what he wants them to be. 

Weeks- Pretty darn quick. A book every year and a half or so. 

McClellan- Pretty quick. He must've picked it up from Sanderson Sensei. 

Abercrombie- Slower lately, weirdly, but his Half a King/War/World books came out really quickly. 

Rothfuss- Hahahahaha

So compared to his contemporaries, he's pretty quick with his release schedule. 

[Pagerunner he/him]

3 hours ago, Alfa said:

Yesterday (15.06.2017) the 4th and 5th draft of Oathbringer were at 96% progress. Today (16.06.2017) copyedit review is at 67%. Strikes me as incredibly fast. How does he do it...?

Team Sanderson tried something out for Oathbringer, which looks like it has worked well and that they will probably use for future Stormlight books. Instead of putting the whole book through the revision process together, they have done each part on its own. Brandon has discussed over on Reddit how he plots Stormlight books; even though each book is divided into five parts, it can also be viewed as a trilogy.

Quote

I split each book into five parts, which group together to form three chunks plotted like individual volumes of a trilogy--with a large, over-arching plot that ties into the five-book arc of the initial sequence, which in turn is half of the complete ten book arc. Each volume, then, has a complete trilogy’s worth of arcs and climaxes for the primary characters (Kaladin, Shallan, Dalinar) while also having a self-contained flashback sequence, at least one secondary novelette about a character that hasn’t had viewpoints so far, and a related short story collection. The “main character” for the book gets, beyond their flashback sequence, a role in each part of the story.

Or, to put it visually (this is something Brandon actually put together!:

So, Oathbringer is, in a way, three different books all released at the same time, and Brandon and his team decided not to keep them together during revising. To see how this works, you need to understand how Brandon's editing process works, and what each of his drafts means:

Quote

• 1.0 Straight through beginning to end, taking notes as he goes on changes of direction that will need to be fixed in…
• 2.0 Continuity edit, done immediately afterwards
• [Brief gap]
• 3.0 Polish for tighter language, cut about 15%
• Send out to alpha readers (writing group, editor, agent, wife)
• [6-month gap, during which time he takes notes on things to change]
• 4.0 Incorporate alphas’ feedback and his own reflections
• 5.0 Second polish
• [Send to betas, fans etc. - not the same people as alphas - plus editor]
• 6.0 Last fixes
• 7.0, 8.0: copy edit and proofreads (polishes)

What's also important to understand is that drafts 2 and 7 (and I think 8, as well) aren't Brandon's responsibility, they are mainly his editor Peter's domain. So what they did for this book was something like this: instead of waiting until the first draft was completed, Peter worked on the second draft of Parts 1-3 while Brandon was working on the first draft of Parts 4-5. While Brandon was doing the third draft of Parts 2-3, the alpha readers were already reading the third draft of Part 1. (I'm not that privy to exactly what happened, so my specific examples may be incorrect. But each of the three books was at different parts in the editing process, to speed up editing overall.) 

So, it's not like Brandon finished up his 6.0 draft and is already two-thirds done with another draft. What that meant was, Peter has already done Draft 7 of Parts 1-3 (Books 1 and 2). Brandon just finished Draft 6 of Parts 4-5 (Book 3).

It's a good system that minimizes downtime. (Peter's doesn't need Brandon to finished writing all 500,00 words, or whatever it wound up at, before he started doing anything. And Brandon didn't sit around waiting for Peter, either.) I don't think it will be necessary for other books they do, especially the YA ones. But it looks like it has really expedited the editing process, as long as Brandon has a sufficiently detailed outline in place from the get-go. (And he did spend a full year outlining Oathbringer, if I recall correctly.)

[Storming Radiant he/him]

I'm pretty sure that Brandon actually used Hemalurgic spikes to steal martin's and Rothfuss's writing speed for himself...

 

[Ammanas]

2 hours ago, Storming Radiant said:

I'm pretty sure that Brandon actually used Hemalurgic spikes to steal martin's and Rothfuss's writing speed for himself...

 

Someone already created a comic expressing the same idea awile back:

Edit: It's showing up a bit blurry for me. Sorry. Dont know whats going on with it.

 

Edited June 16, 2017 by Ammanas

[DocHoliday he/him]

Freakishly fast. I'm used to waiting 2 years or more for my next dose from one of favored authors. Seven years in one particular case..

So having Sanderson churn out a new book pretty much every year is not only very impressive for the quality of his work, but the quantity of it, the word count, is mind boggling. The SA are thicker than most people's Bibles! 

[Ammanas]

7 minutes ago, DocHoliday said:

Freakishly fast. I'm used to waiting 2 years or more for my next dose from one of favored authors. Seven years in one particular case..

So having Sanderson churn out a new book pretty much every year is not only very impressive for the quality of his work, but the quantity of it, the word count, is mind boggling. The SA are thicker than most people's Bibles! 

Last year was amazing with the number of books released:

1. Bands of Morning

2. White Sand Graphic novel

3. Arcanum Unbounded

4. Calamity

5. Alcatraz 5

I think I got all of them...

[DocHoliday he/him]

Elantris Anniversary edition was last year I think. IDK if you want to count that or not, but it was definitely a prolific year.

Edit: I stand corrected EAE was 2015.

I am still firm in my conviction that Sanderson is a Beast

Edited June 17, 2017 by DocHoliday

[Calderis he/him]

24 minutes ago, DocHoliday said:

Elantris Anniversary edition was last year I think. IDK if you want to count that or not, but it was definitely a prolific year.

I got it for my birthday last year. So yes it was. Wasn't TFE anniversary end of last year too? 

Edited June 16, 2017 by Calderis

[thegatorgirl00 she/her]

2 hours ago, DocHoliday said:

Elantris Anniversary edition was last year I think. IDK if you want to count that or not, but it was definitely a prolific year.

It was actually at the end of 2015. Secret History, however, was 2016, which was not listed. 

[Ammanas]

32 minutes ago, thegatorgirl00 said:

It was actually at the end of 2015. Secret History, however, was 2016, which was not listed. 

I included it with Arcanum Unbounded

[Ari he/him]

15 hours ago, Islington said:

As a general comment, very freaking fast. He's said in interviews that he writes when he's stressed, when he has free time for fun, and as his job. He also treats it like a job, writing (or doing writing adjacent things) up to eight hours a day sometimes. He writes like he sold his bone marrow for it. 

Compare to others; 

Martin- I'm not a fan in general after the last couple books, but he generally writes pretty slowly. But, his books are exactly what he wants them to be. 

Weeks- Pretty darn quick. A book every year and a half or so. 

McClellan- Pretty quick. He must've picked it up from Sanderson Sensei. 

Abercrombie- Slower lately, weirdly, but his Half a King/War/World books came out really quickly. 

Rothfuss- Hahahahaha

So compared to his contemporaries, he's pretty quick with his release schedule. 

Actually, he's not particularly fast at writing, (don't lynch me yet, let me finish! ) he's just very disciplined about doing it very frequently, so he doesn't work in fits or bursts like a lot of writers do. He's said he usually writes 2500 words a day on average, which is actually pretty middling in terms of writing fast, and can be managed in a couple of hours for a fast writer. It's that he does it literally every day he should, and that he had several trunk novels that he could simply revise, that have made him so prolific. Brandon is consistent, not fast, and he had a headstart because until Words of Radiance, he was essentially just heavily revising novels he'd already drafted.

He also writes as a break from his main projects, so essentially everything that was a side-project, like Alloy of Law, you are getting because Brandon writes during his breaks from writing. Other authors usually have a hobby they engage in when they're taking a break to recharge on their main projects.

[HillbillyBurgess]

20 hours ago, Felt said:

Multiple things are going on at the same time, he doesn't finish a draft and start the copy edit, but while finishing it other people are working on the next fase... 

Can't wait for November!!!! 

I'm pretty sure you mean Oathvember. 

[Storming Radiant he/him]

On 16.6.2017 at 8:13 PM, Ammanas said:

Someone already created a comic expressing the same idea awile back:

I had no idea... Though it makes sense that other people thought of this. It is the most logical explanation for way we still don't have The Doors of Stone...

[Weltall]

12 hours ago, Ari said:

It's that he does it literally every day he should, and that he had several trunk novels that he could simply revise, that have made him so prolific. Brandon is consistent, not fast, and he had a headstart because until Words of Radiance, he was essentially just heavily revising novels he'd already drafted.

Really really heavily revising in the case of Warbreaker. He never finished the book where Siri and Vivenna's story was taken from so he had to write a world around their story while also finding a place that Vasher could fit since it was intended as his origin story after he'd already appeared in Way of Kings Prime.

But yeah, he's mentioned on multiple occasions that he's very consistent in how much he writes a day so he's able to get a lot done in a way that doesn't burn him out. The way he writes is fascinatiing and I feel lucky that he's willing to share so much about his process and various early stories or parts of them so we can get a sense for how he works. Digging onto things like Mythwalker and how concepts that didn't work there were revised to make up Kaladin's story in WoK, the main plot of Warbreaker and part of the background of Mistborn (where they all work really well) helps you appreciate the writing process and the end result that much more.