Plot Q&A: Brandon Sanderson's Writing Lecture #4 (2025)

0:00 BRANDON: Hey! Welcome to Week 4 of Brandon Sanderson's Writing Lectures, the 2025 Edition. I'm taking questions from the audience this time. But you weren't there in that audience. I'd like to give you a chance. So, if you watch this video and have questions about plot, do try to watch the previous two as well. But if you've been following along and I don't get to answering your question that you might have, leave it in the comments. I'm going to do a special web-only Q&A for you guys. So post your questions here in the comments about plot. Best if you can reference the previous two lectures for things I talk in this. And I will do my best to get to you. And for now, enjoy Q&A on plot. All right, everybody! Welcome to Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy, the Q&A. Yeah. CLASS: (cheering and applause) BRANDON: So I have in my hand the questions that you have asked about plot, and I'm going to get to some of them. Because most likely I will answer one or two of these and then you will start raising your hands, and I will get sidetracked by answering the questions you all have here. But let's see. All right. So, "Besides tone promises, what are some of the most important kinds of promises to make?"

1:25 This is an excellent question. Because I really focused on the tone promises, but there's a lot more going on here. You do generally want to try to promise what kind of plot it's going to be, little p plot. Right? You don't have to promise big P Plot until near the end of Act I if you think that way. Sometimes you just do. Right? Again, I reference "Star Wars" a lot because it's a movie that everybody has seen and that breaks down really well. It promises it in Scene 1. Big ship, little ship. Big ship's dominating little ship. It's about the little ship blowing up the big ship. Yeah. Right? "Star Wars" does a lot of things like that that really just kind of click into place. So you can make a promise about your big P Plot. But also, you know, you can do it little p plot. You can make a character promise. The original "Mulan" is really good at this, the Disney "Mulan." Right? This is a character promise. How does Mulan solve problems? She solves problems in a smart way. If you don't remember the opening of that, she has to feed the chickens, I believe it is. And so she, like, ties the feed to a dog and then has the dog go running and feed the animals. Right? This is a kind of--this is the sort of character that we're doing. She is going to solve problems in an unconventional way using her wits. And indeed, that is basically who Mulan is all the way through.

3:04 You can give a promise of a character arc. Like, who is this character? What do they want? What are they going to change and become? I do think that, again, these can be at the beginning. They don't have to be. But you usually want to promise a character arc. You usually want to promise--like every Disney movie ever has an "I Want" song. Right? This is the journey they're going to go on, and what they want to get, and who they are, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

3:37 One of the things that you can also promise is you can promise, if you do it right, what your stand-up-and-cheer moment is going to be. And that can be really handy for helping people get, you know, put up sometimes with a character getting beaten down, because they know each of those times the character's getting beaten down, it is set up for that moment where they will be victorious. This usually involves, you know--. Like, let's use the original "Captain America."

4:16 Right? Captain America is a spindly little guy who can't fight. He still tries to protect people and gets into fights. And his friend has to bail him out. You know what kind of movie you're watching. You know that you're there for a superhero transformation. That is a promise. He is eventually going to be able to be the strong one and save his friend. Right? And so that is a promise of, you know, your character's transformation. But really it's, like, foreshadowing. You're going to have a moment where you're going to stand up and cheer for this guy. It's coming. You've got to put up with him, you know, being a spindly dweeb for a little while. But then after that, he's going to, you know, the heart is more important than the body, and that sort of stuff. So all of those are types of promises you can make, down to the classic Chekhov’s gun. Right? The classic Chekhov’s gun. This is a story writing adage that says if you hang a gun on the wall, or above the mantle, or on the mantle? If you hang a gun up, if you show a gun in Act I you should fire that before the end of the movie, is basically what it says. I'm paraphrasing. He uses it more explicitly than that. But the idea is that people are going to expect, if you see and highlight something as a writer, that that thing will be important or relevant. You can use that against them if you would like. You can use those as red herrings for setups in a different kind of payoff, where it's like you thought you knew what was happening, but you don't. But promises are what make people engage with a story. Your progress is what keeps them there. Your payoff is what, honestly, is going to make them read the next book. Right? A lot of people will read a book with bad payoff, and they'll get to the end. They're generally not going to put the book down because of bad payoff. What they're going to do is go write a one-star, or even worse, the two-stars. Because two-stars are the worst. Right? When you really want to get an author, you leave the two-star.

6:28 Because the one-stars, they're just like, "I didn't finish this. It wasn't for me." Right? The two-stars are like, "Oh, this could have been good, but it screwed up the ending." CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: So yeah. The two-stars are always like, "I wanted to like this. But the author sucks." "What do you do if you feel your plot is too unoriginal?" Another good question. So, if you are worried you're too unoriginal, most of the time you should stop stressing about this.

7:09 All right? Artists love to stress about being unoriginal. Your originality will almost certainly come out as a natural growth of you progressing and writing as a storyteller. Usually--I'm going to give you the reason why it's usually in a minute--but usually this isn't as big a problem as you think it is. Once in a while it kind of is. This is if early readers are telling you your book's too derivative. If consistently you write books that feel a little bit derivative.

7:53 Sometimes you can just be like, "Well, I am a product of my inspirations." I don't know that James Cameron really cares that much that people call "Avatar" "Dances with Smurfs." Right? CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: He made the movie he wanted to make. He loves his own movie. People love that movie. He got a theme park and, you know, made a billion dollars. But if this does bother you and if you are consistently getting it, and you're an established writer. This isn't your first book.

8:31 You've practiced and later on you're like, "This book is too unoriginal." There's a number of things that you can do. Number one is play off the fact that people are expecting certain things and force yourself to take the next step. Say, "All right. What the story would normally do here is X. It's been done that way over and over. What can I do that will make my story deeper and more interesting by making a different decision?"

9:03 Example: "Stormlight Archive." One of the big problems I had with "Way of Kings Prime," which you can read for free if you want to do so for study purposes. I don't think it's that good. But people seem to enjoy reading it anyway. This is the version I wrote in 2002. A lot of the book worked. But the character that was in the place of Kaladin did not. In this book I had a pretty standard plot line. Young spearman saves the king or the king's brother, earn himself a knighthood, and it's a story of him learning to navigate the upper crust of society. You can do that very well.

9:47 That can be a very interesting story. But I, as an author, at the end of the book, I'm like, "That is not who I want this character to be." Even though I wrote the whole book. Feels like he's the most bland person in the entire story, and we're seeing the majority of it through his eyes. Something is wrong. This is a case where I felt like my plot was unoriginal. If you've read "The Way of Kings"--I'll try not to give too big of spoilers if you haven't--but the entire revision of that story, which kind of took it a completely different direction, was me saying, "OK, what if a character makes the opposite decision that most people would make? Why would that be a better story? How can I make that earned for his character? And how can I make the story really work because of it?" Don't twist for twist's sake. OK? Twist because it makes your story better. Anyone can surprise a reader. You have a character open the door and get shot and then it's over, and you end. Like, it's not hard to surprise readers. It really isn't. Surprising them effectively, in a way that makes your story more interesting, that something happens they're like, "The story is better now that this twist has happened," that's hard. OK? So if your story doesn't need a twist, don't feel bad not having a twist.

11:19 "Pride and Prejudice" is not worse because they are together at the end. Spoilers. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Right? But that doesn't mean you couldn't, if you are kind of bored of that narrative, say, "Well, what am I going to do differently?" My one warning to you on this is, I warn you to foreshadow early it's going to be a different kind of story. Yes, "Into the Woods" gets away with not doing so to the extent that I recommend people do. You can not foreshadow. You can turn your story into something else in the middle. But be warned. I tell the story sometimes about an author who broke in around the same time I did. My books really started to take off, and his didn't take off to the same extent. We met once. Very nice person. I'm not going to mention who it is because I've told this story so many times, it's been 20 years, so I don't even know if I'm remembering the details right. All right? This is what happens to you. But I remember meeting this author, and I had started reading their book. And their book was good. But it wasn't for me. I'd read a bunch of traditional quest fantasy when I was younger, and I was kind of done with young person finds out they're the heir to the throne and chases a magical object that they're looking to get because then they can use the magical object to save the day. Not saying that I won't someday read another book like that that just blows my mind, and I love. But at that point, I was kind of done with the Terry Brooks style of book. And I told him that. I'm like, "You know, I tried the book. You're obviously a good writer. It just wasn't for me." He's like, "Why?" And I'm like, "Well, this and this." And he's like, "You know, I got that so many times in my reviews. But the thing is, at the three-quarter mark I twist it on its head and that's not the case of what the book is at all. In fact, I wrote the book," he said, "to be a deconstruction of that archetype that was so popular, and it's really frustrating that I then get people not liking the book because of the very thing I was deconstructing." The people he thought would love his book were complaining.

13:37 I don't know if my interpretation is correct. But what I feel might be the lesson here is that if your book is going to have a revolution that big that is unforeshadowed, your book might have problems. It could be awesome. "Into the Woods" works. But here's your danger. The people who are looking for a classic YA style quest fantasy, what's going to happen to them when they get to the three-quarter mark? STUDENT: They're mad.

14:11 BRANDON: They're mad. Right? They're like, "Wait a minute! You're deconstructing the thing that I love and saying it's not cool?" Yeah, they're mad. Right? What about the people who would love a deconstruction of the quest fantasy? STUDENT: They don't get that far. BRANDON: They don't get there because, like myself, they put the book down in the first third because they're like, "Well, this isn't targeted at me." It isn't, again, to say that you can't do this. But your promises can indicate that this is a book that is heading that direction. And it is hard to do. Hard things to do often force you to grow as a writer, so I do encourage you to try them. But, you know, that's my warning to you on that one. Be careful about that. If that's the story you want to tell, try to figure out how you're going to get the right audience to that book and not have them put it down in the early chapters. One way to do that might be to write other books that are more explicitly deconstructions so that when you're popular and you release this one, everyone's like, "Oh, this reads like a standard quest fantasy. I know you, Author Person. I know where this is going. I'm going to enjoy this real big when that kid who finds a magic sword turns out to be a demon and destroyed by it and we deconstruct everything and suddenly it's like--" whatever. Right? CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: So yeah. There's my answer to you on that one. If you feel your plot is unoriginal, push yourself harder, is answer number one. Number two. Transpose that plot to a new genre, or a new subgenre, and try to use the new subgenre's tropes to impact the story in interesting ways.

16:08 This is the "Ten Things I Hate About You" methodology. Right? The Shakespeare retelling. You know. Taking a story and putting it in a new setting and then asking yourself, "All right, with these new genre conventions, what do we do to this kind of story?" You can often ask yourself, "All right. The standard story. What are the flaws in this story? How can we make a story about those flaws?" "Mistborn" exists because I was reading "Harry Potter" and I said, "Man, these dark lords never get a break!" Right? They always get killed by some kid, or there's, like, a furry-footed British dude who throws the ring in a hole. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Like, you are the most powerful thing around and then, "Oh, sorry. You were destroyed by the power of a mother's love." Right? CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Right? Like, what if the dark lord won? What if Frodo got to the end and Sauron's like, "My ring! I lost that. Thanks for bringing it back. That must have been really hard to do."

17:15 CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: "Anyway, you're dead, and I take over the world." Right? Like, that was the inspiration originally for "Mistborn." You can, you know, reverse this story on its head. And the secret is, a lot of stories that reverse on their head, a lot of deconstructionism will tell you--what is it? You're a lion but you're denying. You will need to be using those same narrative tropes, just in interesting ways, in order to actually deconstruct in a lot of at least popular fiction methodology. So you will be able to have your cake and eat it too, which is the big, dark secret of deconstructionism as it applies to writing popular fiction. So yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Question over there.

17:57 STUDENT: For a lot of us writing our first books, I'd love to write a book and have a big series and have it go on forever. But for those books, promises that are unfulfilled in that book, on your first time. No-no or--? BRANDON: OK. Good question. So you're writing a big series. You want to have it go on for a long time. What are the promises that you are going to leave unfulfilled? Is that a no-no? The answer is you can definitely leave some promises unfulfilled. Right? Depends on how you do it. If we go back to "Star Wars," Darth Vader being defeated is, like, a mini promise fulfilled, but not a big promise fulfilled. And they're able to get away with that. "Lord of the Rings" it's like the promise is "We're going to destroy the ring." We don't do that in Book 1. Spoilers. Right?

18:49 CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: And so basically readers will accept if you are fulfilling some promises and putting off others. Right? What does "Fellowship of the Ring" fulfill on? "The ring will corrupt those who are around it." That's really cool. It's a good fulfilling sort of thing to that end, and the Fellowship then breaks, and yada yada. So what I do recommend is don't save all the cool stuff for Book 7. New writers run into this. I'm exaggerating. But they'll be like, "This will get really cool once I do X, Y, and Z." Well, for your first novels, make sure the really cool is there right at the start. Don't make people wait to find out if you can tell a good ending. This is why, in general--there's exceptions to every rule--in general, all things being equal, I recommend that new writers trying to break in tell a complete story with sequel potential in their first book. I like to do this when I can, even as an established author. "Skyward" is a complete story. At the end we say this is where it's going to go for the series, but the first book stands very well on its own. "Steelheart" is a complete story. "Mistborn" is a complete story. I tend to do this with series. "Stormlight" is not so much one. Right? And I try to kind of make that promise. But if you are looking at the plot arcs of "Stormlight" we do not get into solving the problem of the capital P plot of the series, but the story of the bridge crews that we promise is fulfilled. So you give a really powerful fulfillment to a primary character's arc and then leave greater things unanswered and you're fine.

20:43 The other way, of course, to do it is to do something that is a more serialized series. I know that sounds odd. But, you know, one where each book is going to have its own complete arc and can be read out of order. Those sorts of stories don't have this problem, obviously. But if you're wanting to do the big epic, that's what I recommend. Go ahead. STUDENT: So we talked last week about different plotting methods. BRANDON: Yes.

21:08 STUDENT: Say you're just starting a project from scratch and you're still getting started your story, but you're trying to figure out which plotting method would best suit your specific project. Do you have any advice on approaching that problem? BRANDON: Yeah. Advice on approaching if you want to try different plotting methods, matching them to a given story. It's going to be really individual to you. What have you tried in the past and what has worked for you in the past. Take what has worked. If you're a new author, meaning you haven't written your sixth book yet, is what I would put as a newer author. Right? At that point it's like, "All right, what worked in the past? I'm going to lean into this and do it even more.

21:52 Does it work better if I lean in even more? Does it not work?" If you're also a new writer, like, you may want to try the "Whose Line Is It Anyway" version of writing a story where it's like, "I know I'm going to do this, this, and this. Go! And I don't know what any chapter's going to be." And, you know, yes/but, no/and, that sort of stuff, your way through an entire book. The "Alcatraz" books were written that way. I would brainstorm a bunch of things, just like "Whose Line Is It Anyway," and say, "These all have to go in the book by the end. Go!" And I would not outline because I wanted to practice discovery writing and things like that. So if you wonder where the "Alcatraz" books came from-- CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: That will not surprise any of you who have read them.

22:40 STUDENT: Nope. BRANDON: Where those books come from. Practicing the different methodologies is just handy for many authors as a tool. But do also understand, there are a lot of authors who find one way of writing a story that really works for them, and they lean into it, and they don't change for the next 60 years, and they write classic after classic. So don't stress if you're not the type that's like, "I want to try all these."

23:08 If you have something that works, just do it. What would I do? Like, I'd try the two extremes and then try to work my way into something that is a mix of them, since most people I know are a mix. The two extremes being, you know, "Whose Line Is It Anyway" your way through an entire book, and also world builder's disease, you give yourself, like, four months, depending on whatever, and you just won't let yourself write. Only do this once. Those of you who spend 20 years, don't do that. But, you know, give yourself a deadline, but a really liberal one, and worldbuilder's disease and plot, and then see fi that makes your book better or not.

23:51 Yeah. STUDENT: When you're running overlapping story arcs, how do you plan it so that everything, all the arcs, come together in that perfect stand-up-and-cheer moment? BRANDON: Overlapping arcs, how do you work them together, so they come together in a stand-up-and-cheer moment. A few tips. Number one is you may not get it right in the first draft. You may not get it right in the fifth draft. You will hopefully eventually get it right. But a few tips. One of the things that tends to stand-up-and-cheer is when you can hit the character arcs emotional payoff right before the kind of physical arc, the external arc. Internal then external usually is the beat that you want. Right? Han comes back and saves Luke. Luke decides to be a Jedi and trust in the Force, then they defeat the bad guys because they have both made their decisions. That's your standard.

24:52 You can reverse it. But that's just kind of a rule of thumb. If you can use that internal arc to then push you into the external arc, give them the last little bit they need, those are generally stand-up-and-cheer moments. The reason being that if you foreshadow it, the reader is waiting. The reader is waiting, the viewer in this case, for Han to come back, and the viewer is waiting for Luke to decide to be a Jedi. These are the two things that you've just been watching them both fail at repeatedly, but you know they're both getting close. Then because they succeed, they did it. It isn't that the narrative just came together. It's that they struggled, failed, made impactful decisions, and those impactful decisions made them succeed. That's usually what we talk about with stand-up-and-cheer. Right? There are things you're waiting for. You can do them without as much character arcs. You can do them by just punishing the character. Right? So much that when--mild spoilers--when the hammer hits their hand, you cheer because they've been through so much. Right? When they're able to wield Thor's hammer. That's, you know, they've struggled so much it's time to have a success.

26:21 If you are balancing a whole bunch of plotlines, another rule of thumb is, you can overlap them too much, to the point that the reader gets a sort of paralysis to awesome things happening, a numbness, a numbness to awesome things happening. Whereas if you stagger those, sometimes that is better. A Sanderlanche generally actually tries to stagger them--it depends on the book--so that they're coming in order. But even a Sanderlanche, like, I can go too far. I've had to trim back books before in revisions because there's too many twists, too many things becoming fulfilled. And sometimes you back up and say, "I'm going to use this as kind of a climactic moment at the two-thirds mark for this character. Then they're going to fade into the background and then we can focus on the big thing. I did that a ton in "The Wheel of Time," where it's like, all right, midpoint climax. It feels like an ending for this minor character. You are now allowed as a reader to be like, "That was awesome. They're cool. Now they won't distract me from Rand anymore.

27:34 Pat on the head. Off into the mists of time for you. Thank you for--" you know. Right? Like, that sort of thing can be really handy to do also. So a few things there. Let me get one more of these and then we'll do some more questions from the audience. All right. Because these are all really good questions. "What are some common mistakes made when it comes to exposition?" Oh, exposition! Oh, exposition. So one of the things--. If you don't know what exposition means, in a story, particularly science fiction and fantasy story, you are going to have to, as a writer, bring the reader up to speed on a ton of things. We call this a learning curve. Every story has a learning curve.

28:29 The more sci-fi/fantasy-ish it is, the steeper your learning curve, because the higher--the more you're going to have to learn to be brought up to speed. If you are reading a story about a student at BYU who is taking a sci-fi/fantasy class and trying to write their first novel, your learning curve, the point that you have to get to is not so high, the amount you have to learn. You already know all of this, you as a reader. Now someone from another country who has never heard of this might have a steeper learning curve. So you can't make it perfect for every reader. But understand that. Right? Historicals tend to have a steeper learning curve. Things that are very narrow in a genre tend to have a steeper learning curve because you can rely on other things, other books the reader has read. And sci-fi/fantasy tends to have a steeper learning curve.

29:22 You can make the learning curve more shallow by not frontloading exposition, and by using exposition well. Exposition, when we use classic exposition, it is when the character basically, either in first person or in third person, gives a big paragraph explaining. "Well, the gods were like this, and they did this, so that we have this, so that we have this. Now this. And the magic works like this. And blah--." You know. All of this stuff. You generally want, as a writer, to do everything you can to make your learning curve more shallow without impacting the subgenre and art that you're trying to make. Right? Shallow learning curves good, unless they inhibit the story you're trying to tell. Steven Erikson, the story he was trying to tell did not benefit from a shallower learning curve, because that was part of the point. "Way of Kings" has a steeper learning curve than "Mistborn." And so don't frontload your exposition. Gone are the days where you would write a prologue that is a huge exposition dump. You can still find plenty of fine fantasy novels from the '70s and '80s that do that. And gone are the days when you can get away with giant info dumps, is what we call them, in your opening chapters. Move them out into dialogue where you can. But be careful about maid and butler dialogue. This is kind of a term we borrow from the stage world where, you know, you would have the maid and butler come on the start of a play and be like, "As you know, the lady is away for the weekend." And the other's like, "Yes. And as you know, the master now will go golfing because she hates his golfing habit." You know. "Well, and as you know, he's been getting--." You want to avoid--they also call it "As you know, Bob" dialogue.

31:28 So how do you do this? Right? How do you write it? So moving into dialogue will naturally make the learning curve a little easier. Making it part of something important to the characters that you get across briefly will make your learning curve a little shallower. It's easier to read if it's important to the characters, if it's in dialogue or these sorts of things. I often say the grand skill of writing sci-fi/fantasy is to be able to get your exposition to readers without them realizing that you're expositing. My wife, when my kids were younger, would make for them a smoothie every morning. Right? She would put spinach in the smoothie and say, "This is making it into zombie guts." My kids were like Calvin, from "Calvin and Hobbs." Right?

32:27 CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Zombie guts equals good and tasty. And they're like, "Wow! Zombie guts!" She would do this in order to get them to eat something that has at least a little bit of vitamin in it. Right? CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: You want your exposition to be the spinach in the reader's smoothie. You want them to not realize that it's happening. And you do this by avoiding the big paragraphs, by putting in only what you need, particularly at the beginning. Don't feel you need to dump everything.

33:03 I will get to you. Hands down for now. It's actually kind of distracting. So try not to get them bored. Try to make it meaningful and important and useful to the narrative. Try to slip it in, a line here between dialogue, a line in the dialogue. Try to come up with reasons to construct scenes where these things are relevant. You know there are dwarves and wizards in "The Hobbit" because they're coming and eating all of Bilbo's food. And Bilbo is so annoyed that they're eating his food. That scene tells you who Bilbo is, that it's a world full of dwarves and wizards, that this guy's a homebody, and through their natural conversation you find out they're on a big adventure. You don't need the deep exposition. You don't need to know the nature of the One Ring in order to have Bilbo be annoyed that dwarves are at his door, even if the nature of the One Ring is your capital P Plot. And it wasn't even when he wrote "The Hobbit." Did you guys know he went back and revised "The Hobbit" to change the thing with the One Ring after he decided to write "Lord of the Rings"? I would call that cheating, but it's not because Granpa Tolkien did it, which means we all can. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Yeah. He released "The Hobbit." Then he's like, "Oh, wow. As I've decided what the One Ring is, Gollum probably shouldn't just not care about it. I'd better revise The Hobbit to make the One Ring more relevant to what the One Ring is." So anyway.

34:48 All right. I got ya. STUDENT: All right. So I was just wondering, like, if you have a huge, like, a lot of exposition. BRANDON: huh. STUDENT: A lot of exposition there would be a super steep learning curve, would spending, like changing how long it takes to get that out, so like extending it, would that shorten the curve by, like, making them interested to learn more about it? BRANDON: OK. STUDENT: And would that BRANDON: Yeah. One more time. I think I've got what you're asking.

35:10 STUDENT: OK. I can't (unclear). BRANDON: Yeah. STUDENT: So if you have, like, what would be a lot of content, like have a huge, steep learning curve. BRANDON: You're going to have a steep learning curve. You've got a lot of content. Is it better to expand that to let them--? STUDENT: Yeah. BRANDON: OK. Good question. This is an excellent question. So, you can do that. It's dangerous because longer can be more boring. Right? I would counter with it depends on your subgenre. If you're writing in middle grade, it is very traditional to lengthen out that learning curve by starting kid in our world, here are their problems. Learn their problems and their friends before pulled into a fantasy world.

35:54 Now those problems and friends you understand, and we can start on the fantasy world. That's why portal fantasy tends to be consistently the most popular middle grade variety of fantasy, because you can establish some stakes and some character before. A lot of epic fantasy, it's just like, no, we're starting right in. Boom! Someone's getting attacked. A steeper learning curve because your audience will accept it, and also it's the arc you want to tell, like I said earlier. So yes, you can do that. Often you don't want to lengthen it too much. But if you can construct that perfect scene, that perfect scene that can show character and the problem and hint at some of the important things of the world, and inject that into the beginning of your story, that can often--it does make your story a little longer. But it can shallow out that learning--shallow? Whatever. It can even out that learning curve. It can also let you hit character really hard first off. Then you can start adding things as they go along. So one of the reasons why quest fantasies so often are start in a city or town that feels an awful lot like rural America so that everybody who was reading "Old Yeller" and "Where the Red Fern Grows" and things like that at the time that these were popular, it's like, "All right. I'm grounded. I'm grounded in Rand al Thor. He lives on a farm with his dad, and he thinks there's a girl in town that's cute that he might want to marry. But he doesn't want to have to quite make those decisions yet. He's glad he's got his dad. He wishes he knew his mom. Monsters!" Right? CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: And then out of that world into a fantasy world. It's not a portal fantasy, technically. But you can see how it's, like, one half a portal fantasy. Same with "Lord of the Rings." Same with a lot of this quest fantasy. We don't have to do that as much anymore, because we can rely on people knowing what a fantasy world was. When Tolkien wrote, like, what a fantasy world was, was a little more nebulous to the general public. In fact, I haven't yet been able to identify, and someday I would like to see if we can find the definitive first fantasy novel that doesn't reference our world in any way. Because I thought for a while it might be "Lord of the Rings" but it's really not. Because he said, "Lord of the Rings" is a prehistory to Earth. Right? And so what is the first one, the at least first one that people actually read. Maybe there's something, some manuscript somebody wrote. But you know what I mean? I'm still trying to find that one. But basically all fantasy, as a rule, until around Tolkien, referenced Earth in some way. They even usually used it in the title. Right? "Earthsea." In order to just help with that learning curve.

38:59 We don't have to do that as much anymore, which is nice. And I kind of say the rise of nerd culture just being popular culture has helped that people understand "This is a fantasy book. I understand what a fantasy book is. That's really big. I'll read the shorter ones about people kissing." CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: I don't mind that people read the shorter ones about people kissing because some of those also say, "Well, maybe I would like that big one now." So thank you for everyone who's writing the fantasy books about people kissing.

39:32 CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: All right. There were some other questions. Go. STUDENT: So if we write a book that has a lot of promises, how do we, like, keep track of that as you write? What organization can you use to make your. BRANDON: What organization can you use? I just have an outline. Right? In fact, I should do this, because I didn't do it last time. What do I do? How do I actually build an outline? So the Sanderson method of building an outline. I sit down with my story, and I start identifying what my different plot cycles are. All of the small p plots. Usually I'm going to want one for each character. Right? I'm going to want an internal arc for them in some way. Most stories benefit from a character's internal journey. This is the, you know, struggle to overcome X, Y, or Z, or to become X, Y, or Z, or something like that. I'm usually want to want some of those. But I'm also going to be like, "All right, the main sort of plot that I'm going to be doing promises for, or progress." I'm going to be like, "All right. What's the big one? What is happening in this story?" And this might be something like, "All right. Kaladin needs to save a bridge crew." This is the kind of promise he makes himself in Chapter whatever, 11, or 12, or wherever it is where he's like, "I'm going to try one more time, and this time I'm going to actually save somebody." Right? That becomes kind of a major, like, this is the spine I'm hanging my story on. For a book as big as "The Way of Kings" I will probably have three of these. There'll be kind of one main one, and then two sub main ones. So kind of this is like external plot. And I'll usually at the same time have some character interactions.

41:44 Like, I might have a romance. And I might have an information plot. Right? A lot of my books it's like, "How does the magic work?" Right. In "Way of Kings" it's less--there is an info plot, but the info plot is with Shallan. With Kaladin it's not an info plot. It's an apprentice plot. Except he has no master to teach him. But it's that sort of plot. It's like, "I need to work this out and become a master of this. Otherwise, everybody I love is going to die." And so I identify what these things are, and I start writing down what are my big moments of progress? Usually I start at the end. What's my stand-up-and-cheer, if there is one? Or what's the kind of ultimate culmination of this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this? And I identify all of these things, and I start putting bullet points and brainstorming.

42:39 What are my steps along the way? What are signposts? I know what each of these endings is. How can I indicate that we're making progress? What are the places where they backslide? What are the big moments where, you know, they think it's not going to work, that it's just going to fail? What are all of these? And I have all of this, it's just a bunch of lists of this plot cycle, bullet points, this plot cycle, bullet points, this plot cycle, bullet points. And then I start in my outline to fold them together into sections of the book, looking to have some big moment be a demarcation of the end of a part and the beginning of another part. Either some big complication has happened, or some major step has been achieved along the way. And I start just interweaving these in my outline to help me see this is what the book is going to be. It's going to have this sense of progress on these, and there's going to be a mini information plot, and I want to make sure I don't lose it, so we're going to make a point happen here.

43:47 And then I build chapters out of that as I write. You wouldn't go to my outline and be like, "Here's Chapter 1. Here's Chapter 2. Chapter 3." You will generally have all of these things moved into order in a giant list of bullet points with plot headings above explaining what each of them is trying to do kind of in paragraph form. And usually we put up an outline, one of my old ones. I think we have the "Skyward" outline that you can see. And the thing about this is I generally work with them. So you might go to the "Skyward" outline and have it be numbered as chapters. I'm sometimes numbering them as I'm writing. They are not numbered as I make the outline, but you're getting it after I'm done with it and the book is done.

44:29 And so all of this, it gets exponentially more complicated the more characters you add. Be aware of that. It's pretty easy to write a one-viewpoint narrative in 100,000 words, even using all the worldbuilding and things I like to do. Really hard to do two. If they're involved in the same exact plot, you can do it. "Yumi and the Nightmare Painter" is a two. But they're both in the same plot. If you're going to put two people on different planets, suddenly, you know, it starts to magnify. And it can be more than a doubling effect, depending on how much you're doing there.

45:08 Yeah. STUDENT: What program do you use for building your outlines? BRANDON: I use Microsoft Word for building my outlines. Yep. I just use the document map and Microsoft Word. I'm old school. Give me a piece of paper in a notebook. In the old days I would make them in a notebook. Nowadays it's Microsoft Word. I know a lot of people like that screenwriting one. What's it called? What's that? STUDENT: Scrivener. BRANDON: Scrivener. People really like Scrivener. And I know a lot of people that that's handy for. I do use an internal wiki that's just a local wiki for my team that handles all of the worldbuilding. I make an outline. I write my book. I hand the finished book to them, and they put it all on the wiki so I can reference it later on. I don't have to do that anymore. It's so nice.

45:56 CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Yeah. All right. Yeah. STUDENT: It's kind of a function, but do you, like, make your own maps? Or do you just, like, pawn that off? Does he just draw those? BRANDON: Yeah. Do I make my own maps? So it depends on the book and how relevant the spacing is. So, for instance, in "Mistborn," I didn't generally have maps. It was taking place in one city, and I knew that--I'm like, "Well, this place just has to be this far apart from this other one." When I wrote the original draft of "Way of Kings" I hand drew one out. Because I knew--I'm like, "I have to know how far it is from here to here." You know, one of the things they'll get you for on the internet, and rightly so, is if you have armies teleport around. So do yourself a service. Have a map for scale if you're going to be moving armies. You really want to have that verisimilitude of realism. You can cut some corners with magic, but they should be established rules for your magic system. I can get away with a lot in "Stormlight" because the armies don't have to forage. They can carry with them the ability, in a small cart of something, to make large amounts of food. They don't have to worry about water. You will have plenty of water in Roshar. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Too much. Right? So there are things that I can do that make the movement of armies a lot easier for me, so that the logistics--I don't have to run supply lines nearly as much and things like that. But it depends on what type of story you're telling.

47:28 Yeah. Follow-up? STUDENT: A quick follow-up. BRANDON: Yeah. STUDENT: Are you excited for Civ VII? BRANDON: Am I excited for Civ VII? Yes. I'm excited for Civ VII because it might solve one of the biggest problems in 4X history, which is it might make me actually finish a game. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Right? If you've played 4X it's like, "Well, I feel like I'm done now. I've played this for--" you know. And then you start a new one. They look like they're looking at that. I am worried that they will too much abandon their coolest feature from VI, which was the adjacencies and the planning. It was so much fun in VI to sit down and plan your empire and then build it step by step. It feels like writing a book where, like, finally I get to place this thing here and get this city here. And I worry there won't be as much cool planning, and that was my favorite part of VI. No more Civ VI/VII questions. We'll work over here for a while. STUDENT: (laughing) STUDENT: What advice do you have for, like, foreshadowing an internal consistency for discovery writing? BRANDON: OK. Foreshadowing internal consistency for discovery writers. Fix it in post. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: That's a joke. But seriously, foreshadowing is actually one of the very easiest things to fix in revision. You can turn up or down a foreshadowing knob super easily.

48:46 And so as a discovery writer, you can put that all in. In fact, I would recommend you finish your book. You know what it's all about. You know what you need to foreshadow. Say, "Well, now I'm going to use this thing Brandon talked about." And be like, "All right. in order to earn this ending, I need this, this, and this." I'm going to have a list of those as I go through my revision. Or I'm just going to go to the chapters and say, "Put this in here.

49:11 Construct a scene that does this." Or if your foreshadowing was too much, you're like, "Well, I need a red herring. I'll insert a red herring." A little harder than turning up foreshadowing. Turning it up is easier than turning it down. But it's so easy to add foreshadowing and tweak that. One of the things that I rely on early readers the most for is figuring out where they're guessing my plot twists. And I look for kind of a distribution. I don't usually want plot twists that nobody guesses. This is where my personal threshold is. I feel like if you can't possibly have guessed it, it's not really a cool plot twist. It can be a complication.

49:56 There can be complications nobody guesses. That's totally fine, and you have that all the time. But if what I actually want is a twist, if there's a reveal that is foreshadowed and nobody's able to get it, then I might have done the wrong thing. Like, I want most people to not get it until, like, the page or the paragraph before the reveal. That's where I'm wanting it. In order to get that, some people are going to guess it after Act I, or in some cases in Book 1 for Book 5. But there's no getting around that unless you make the twists so obscure that nobody gets them. However, if everybody is getting it in Act I, then either I need to dial back on my foreshadowing, or I need to make it not a surprise. "Dune" gets away with no surprises. This is Ur example of that. But Hitchcock would do this too. There is a difference between a twist and suspense.

51:01 Right? Like, if you know there's a bomb somewhere and the characters don't, you can create suspense out of that. If you know a certain character is a traitor and the characters don't, "Dune" gets a lot of mileage out of that. It doesn't hide this from you, and it works really well. You can do that if you're like, "Wow, everyone's guessing this. Why don't I just lean into it?" And make it so the characters don't have the information we have because we can see through the villain's eyes. And then make sure your characters don't feel dumb. But otherwise, there you go. So the answer really is fix it in revisions. OK? I'm going to go over here and then I'm going to get this side because I've been ignoring them. STUDENT: On the subject of twists.

51:38 BRANDON: Yes. STUDENT: Some stories seem to have twists pure shock value. BRANDON: Yes. STUDENT: So is there any value to that based on? BRANDON: The true answer is yes, there is. I don't like them very much as an artistic choice. But there is. There is value to them. And usually these are better as complications. Right? You know, spoiler for "Game of Thrones," but somebody gets beheaded that no other fantasy book at the time would have beheaded, in "Game of Thrones." And then he does it again in a later book. This built the series for people who like that. The shock value works in those books because he is trying to do the War of the Roses, a real historical sort of time period. In fact, I believe Westeros is like Great Britain turned upside down. LYNN: BRANDON: Right? With, like, Ireland stapled on top of it or something.

52:34 CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Like, he was very--he's a medievalist. He's like, "Yeah, that's what it is. This is the War of the Roses with a flavor of fantasy, and I wanted to explore the brutality of being a ruler in the medieval era." And so if the story's theme is exploring the brutality of living in the medieval era, then having people die in ways that normal fantasy stories wouldn't gains a lot of shock value. And that enhances the storytelling because it makes it like, "Well, who's going to be next? No one is safe." Problem is, it's hard to have a long-running series with sympathetic characters if you just keep doing that. And so even George had to, you know, pull back, which is one of the big criticisms of the series. It's a natural kind of necessity to the story he was telling. I think they will like--his fans don't actually want him to kill everybody. But I don't know. Regardless, yeah.

53:32 So is there value? Yes. Make sure the value is in watching the characters respond to something completely unexpected and letting that develop your story in interesting directions, rather than doing it just to shock the reader. Because again, shocking the reader is not hard. It takes no skill. Like, anyone can do it. You just say, page 100, "And they got together and lived happily ever after," and then there's 300 blank pages after that.

54:06 CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: That's a twist. Anyone could do that. It does not take any skill. So make sure that even the one that you're doing primarily for shock value is done in such a way that it enhances the themes, the characters, the plot, in a way that works for the narrative that you're telling. And be careful about it. Be aware that statistically--. This hurts me. This hurts me. Statistically, people enjoy stories more if they know the twists ahead of time. This has been researched over and over and over again with lots of different test audiences that people--they sit them down and say, "I'm going to spoil this for you. Now watch it." They consistently rate the story higher if they've been spoiled. Doesn't that hurt? CLASS: (moaning) BRANDON: Doesn't that absolutely hurt? This is where I started to learn to just not mind if certain people who know what makes them engage with fiction flip to the end of the book to see who's alive and dead. And usually what happens is, the reader can enjoy the story, certain psychologies enjoy it better because they don't have to stress if their favorite character dies or not. So therefore they can actually engage with the narrative and really come to like it. Yeah, you guys are all muttering about this. You're like, " I can't believe--. People.

55:35 They're the worst!" CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: "Oh, man. Readers! If only we could have books without them!" CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Yeah. So keep that in mind. Because what that means is a well-foreshadowed twist that people spot, but still really like, is going to be more likely to be an immortal book. A book that changes because beta readers understood--figured it out too much, or, even worse, people read the first book, figured out where you're going, so you absolutely change the second book so all your foreshadowing in the first book doesn't work anymore, those books tend to be on shaky grounds by the ones, the authors that I've studied who I know have done it, and it, in the long run, I think has been detrimental to the series.

56:33 So there's a little bit of a--a couple diatribes on that. All right. I'm going to work my way this way. I'll go here, and then we'll look over here. We'll go here and then here, and then I'll ask in that one. OK. STUDENT: So we've mentioned foreshadowing a bunch. How would you go about giving foreshadowing tips to someone who says, "I know what I need to foreshadow, but I'm struggling to do it effectively"? BRANDON: OK. You know what you need to foreshadow. You're struggling to do it effectively. All right.

56:57 A couple of tips. Readers will follow a couple of things. Number one, genre and narrative tropes. If they think they have figured it out, then you can surprise them with something else. OK? And you can help them lean into that. So your foreshadowing, if you're having trouble making it so that people don't see, but you want to hide in plain sight, you can see what they expect, and then you can start playing with it. All right? Understand that generally, if you're really bare bones, you can do the rule of three. Mention something three times before it's important and relevant. OK? If readers were like, "This fell out of nowhere," your readers will follow the character's attention. What the character's notice and say, "Wow, that's important," the readers will notice and say, "Wow, that's important." So you can focus readers' attention with character attention. And this works for side characters too. Right? Often one of the best ways to show that a character is a good person is not to have them be like, "Yeah, I'm a good person. I teach classes for the university when I don't have to." Instead-- CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: You're all laughing.

58:29 Instead, having someone else say-- LYNN: What? BRANDON: Say, "Brandon is awesome." LYNN: Brandon is awesome. BRANDON: See? I'm joking. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: But one of the reasons why the beginning of "Stormlight" I do not show Chapter 1 from Kaladin's viewpoint is because Kaladin in Chapter 1 is just too dang awesome. And if you're in his viewpoint it might be too much and it might feel like, "I'm tired of this guy. He's too cool." Showing him from the eyes of someone else who he rescues changes all of that.

59:05 Their attention is on him, and then you're like, "I love this guy." He came and saved this little kid he didn't need to save through the eyes of the kid's viewpoint, and he can do all the awesome stuff without it being as over-the-top as it might be from his viewpoint. And then, you know, you work in a few flaws. You work in some back story stuff. And, you know, there's a lot going on there. But I deliberately chose that. It adds to the learning curve, because it is a viewpoint that is not the main character viewpoint. But I thought the tradeoff was good there because it let me do things. So foreshadowing-wise, watch what your characters are doing, what they're paying attention to. And if you need more foreshadowing, you can go with the old standby. Character's like, "It does not make any sense at all that such and such happened," to the other character. "Am I wrong? Is that odd?" And the character's like, "Now that you mention it, it makes absolutely no sense in our magic system. I trust the author though. I'm sure it'll make sense eventually."

60:14 CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: They're like, "Yeah. Yeah. It probably will." And then later on they're like, "This still hasn't made sense." And then later on they're like, "Oh, wow! That's why." I've just pulled the curtain back. You're going to read "Mistborn" different now. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Yeah. "Why are there only 10 metals when 16 seems like there would be?" CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: "There's only half of a chart in the back of the book." "I don't know. It's just one of those things. I'm not 16 metals.

60:47 Why would there be?" CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: All right. Yeah. Sorry. OK. All right. You had a question. STUDENT: What are your tips to avoiding a decline in quality after, like, a midpoint climax or the ending climax of Book 1 to Book 2? BRANDON: How do you avoid a decline in quality after you've had just an awesome climax in the middle of Book 1 or Book 1 moving to Book 2? This is hard. Right? Sometimes it just sings, and then you're like, "Well, that was a great book.

61:21 How do I follow that up?" That's a problem for future you. Make that first book as cool as it can be. The midpoint climax is more of an issue. Generally, when I've had this, there's a couple of things that I've done. In some cases I'm like, "Can that be the endpoint climax instead? It is working so well. Can I move it?" And I actually have done that before. Sometimes I'll be like, "Well, I just need to step up, be a man, sing a Donny Osmond song." We referenced "Mulan." We have to get it in. "And make the ending even cooler." And that means, for me, it could take a few weeks of rebuilding plot lines. Something that I was just working on, I'm like, "Wow, this--" I have, like, a narrative in a plot. I'm like, "This one is going to be awesome. It is so cool." Then I looked at the other viewpoint and I'm like, "Everyone's going to want to skip this one to get to this one." I'm like, "All right. We're going to take a few weeks and we're going to make that second viewpoint, use every tool I can to up how interesting and engaging that viewpoint is going to be so that the balance really is working." Once in a while, I just don't care.

62:46 This is the "Tress of the Emerald Sea" problem. Right? "Tress," the best climax happens right at the three-quarter mark, and it couldn't really be moved because the emotional and narrative climax happens at the end. But, like, the best plot climax happens at the three-quarter mark. And I just decided, "This is a quirk of this book." Right? You're going to get these two climaxes, and one is going to a little bit overshadow the other one. And that's fine. I just, you know, I played with changing it around. I played with other things. And I felt like it was the right narrative, even though it has that quirk to it. So sometimes you just do that. So any of the three, I think, are viable. The second one is the one that you want to try to practice the most though.

63:35 Yeah. Go ahead. STUDENT: How important do you think it is to have the climax, like--I mean, like, you kind of said that. But, like, personally, I kind of like there to be a little bit longer resolution than I feel like is typical in books. But is that weird of me? BRANDON: So you like to have resolution climaxes that are longer than are typical? Readers tend to actually like that. So you're probably fine. It depends on the type of story you're telling. Right? I wouldn't suggest that your flash fiction piece have a 5,000-word coda.

64:05 CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Right? But at the same time, going a little longer at the end, like, let's be honest. Nobody is skipping "The Return of the King" because it has a bit of an extra ending, and a bit of an extra ending, and in the book an even bigger--. Right? No one is skipping "The Dark Knight" because it has three endings lingering. Right? And it really does. Those are, like, both movies that, like, are touted as among the best. And they both really linger on their endings. You'll probably be fine.

64:44 May you be so skilled that when you get to the end no one cares that you're self-indulging a little in the ending because they secretly love it even though it's breaking story structure because they just loved being in your story so much that they want you to keep going. OK? So there you are. All right. Back here. STUDENT: If we're starting, like, in the status quo and, like, the ordinary world, before we get to the inciting incident, how do you hook the--what are the ways to hook the reader? BRANDON: OK, yeah. This is an excellent question.

65:14 This is something that we are confronted by a ton. You're starting in the ordinary world. You want to hook the reader. You want to give the right promises. What do you do? So one answer is the Mulan answer. You focus on what is cool about this character and show them doing something really interesting to solve a problem. They're never going to solve the problem the same way, but they are going to use those same skills later on. And a lot of stories do a really good job with this. They spend that early time just making you really interested in how the character problem solves, or who they are, so that when you get shaken out of that, you're pulled in.

65:56 Another way to do it is to have the little spark of magic in there, even if it's not, you know--. You're not yet going on your big adventure. But remember, like, "Harry Potter" starts with Hagrid turning off lights with--or is it Dumbledore? Dumbledore pulling the lights and Hagrid riding on a bike. Right? Like, even if you discount the opening prologue to "Wheel of Time," which tried to get around this problem, Rand only spends one chapter before real weird stuff starts happening. Right? A lot of books that, like--. "Wheel of Time" people are like, it's historically it's '90s fantasy written in the '80s. It has kind of that slower opening. But that's not a slow burn as people remember it being. It's just compared to now. So you can get--you can do one chapter and then have the spark, or even a couple chapters. But sometimes you can work that in.

66:56 Just giving us something to latch onto that makes the character and situation interesting to us, that then is applicable in some way to the rest of the story. That's what you're trying to figure out how to do. And you'll find lots of stories that what they do is even if they don't do the fantasy prologue--this is really common in middle grade--it's like character was standing there trying to figure out how their dog disappeared. Why did their dog disappear? Or why is there--Dirk Gently does this--why is there a sofa lodged in the stairwell when it couldn't, by the laws of physics, get there. They're pondering some weird thing. And then they go to mundane life at school. But the weird things just keep happening. And then boom! We're, you know, full on fantasy. You see that a ton too. OK? All right. We're going to go here, but then you've already gotten one. So I need to let the peanut gallery have some more questions.

67:53 So I'm going to let you do, and then for the last, like, few minutes we'll let you guys. Because I'm predisposed to point at the people whose hands are in my face the most. Not that I mind. No, no. You're OK. You're OK. I wanted to let you know so I would get to you. But let's go over here. Mm hmm? STUDENT: Yeah. How do you make the ending of a book feel satisfying and not like a total rip off when characters fail at the goal they've been pursuing? BRANDON: OK. Characters fail the goal they've been pursuing. How do you make it satisfying and not feel like a total rip off if they completely fail?

68:25 Well, some of the best stories ever do this. It depends on a couple of factors. Number one, it's a very big difference if the reader knows another installment is coming. Right? "Empire Strikes Back" would be a very different movie if Lucas said, "I'm telling two stories and this is the end." CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Right? Knowing that something is coming will help. And if you're just going to have it just be completely failure at the end, usually you want either the reader to be like, "You know what? That's what they deserve." That's the more literary fiction version of it. Right? Everything goes wrong. It's probably what they deserved. Right? Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid getting mowed down. It's like, "Well, you know, guys, I love ya, but you had this coming. Right? You don't get to live happily ever after. You're going to get gunned down."

69:26 Right? Like, those sorts of stories can be really satisfying if the reader's like, "Yes, it's not what the characters wanted, but it's what the cosmos wanted. It's the right answer that they can't have what they want." And particularly if you spend the story showing them self-destructive or things. If it is they're just not strong enough, then it can work very well to be like, "We just weren't strong enough," if it's bittersweet. Something is accomplished, but a lot of things weren't. Like, the fact--Pandora's box, right? The fact that at the end of the "Fellowship of the Ring" Sam goes anyway, and you get that little victory. Right?

70:07 Everything's gone wrong, but Sam goes anyway. You've got this just, like, little glimmer, and it also is a promise. Right? Where you're like, "OK. The promise that the ring would corrupt everyone happened. But Sam's still there." So, you know, you can find a lot of ways to navigate this, and it really depends on what type of story you're telling, and how you want--like, what's the emotional disposition you want? Do you want the emotional disposition to be, "Wow, I can't believe they failed. I sure hope that they pull it out next time." Or is it, "You know, Quoth, you had this coming." CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: "And I watched your steady downfall and destruction. And yeah, that's what's supposed to happen. I'm sorry. I really like you, but, you know, you deserve this."

70:55 Those are two different stories entirely, and it depends on what you're trying to do. All right. Five minutes left. Anyone in the peanut gallery got a question? Yeah. Go ahead. STUDENT: In a memory loss plot line, how do you avoid overwhelming the reader with too much information? BRANDON: Oh, memory loss plot lines. They're so fun, but they're so hard. Right? If you haven't read one of these, "Project Hail Mary" is an amazing one. Yeah. It's really, really good. And so these stories tend to work by raising questions and then answering them with little bits. A lot of the things that make these stories tend to work is small problems that can be fixed. Right? And while you're fixing you discover some things.

71:43 So it's like, "All right, I am going to--I'm in the bottom of the ocean. I wake up and I'm in, like, a habitat and the windows are cracked. I need to patch the windows." And so in the patching of the windows they discover some things. Right? And then, "All right. What's my next problem? All right." Then they discover a little bit more. So you really rely in these stories on problem solving. Problem solving is kind of key to keeping us engaged. And because they don't know what's going on, they don't know the capital P Plot, you have to give them really engaging little p plots that they can solve really fast as you start to introduce the capital P Plot.

72:27 And usually you have their memory come back, often in flashbacks, to show how they got there, to the point that then by the time you're ready with capital P Plot, you have gotten them there with all these little events, the reader, gotten the reader there and understanding what's going on. That's the best I can give you. Study some of the really good ones and you'll see how they do it. Yeah. All right. Peanut gallery in the way back. I'll let you go next. You're in the middle peanut gallery, but back there and then you, OK? STUDENT: Me?

72:58 BRANDON: Yeah. STUDENT: How do you decide between a bunch of different plot ideas? BRANDON: How do I decide between a bunch of different plot ideas? It's just a vibes thing. When I finish a book and I have the time to write another one, I just go with the vibe of whatever's most exciting to me at that point. Or what I have a deadline for. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: May you be so lucky. STUDENT: What are some things you can ask, like, your beta readers, or thoughts or statements they're asking that give you good indicators on your plot? BRANDON: OK. What are things you can ask your beta readers that give you good indicators on whether your plots working?

73:35 I mean, it's the--. So here's the thing. Writing groups are bad with pacing. Beta readers tend to be good. Writing groups are going to be reading this in chunks. Be careful about changing pacing too much based on writing groups. Beta readers, you can just have them say, "Where are you bored?" That's really what you want to know. Where are you feeling like you want to put the book down? Where is your, you know, where are you being pulled through, and where does it feel like you're just not as interested? You're going to have some of those scenes that, you know, you're going to have your vegetables. But there's lots of famous adages about this like, you know, how do you make a book better? You just take out the parts that people don't like. Right? Or how do you make a great book? You write only scenes that are good.

74:30 CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: There is something to some of these adages, which is like, you can look at those scenes, and you can be like, "How can I get this information across that's happening in here in a more interesting way?" More interesting. Then try to avoid, where you can, two people walk down a hallway and they converse and reverse shot. Right? Stay away from the prequel trilogies method of exposition. There are so many "I'm walking down the hallway. I stop and I say Mace, what do you think about this? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Walk down the hallway. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Right? Like, you're going to have some of those. You're going to have people having--but even if you have them having supper and you can have, like, something that's going on with the dinner, like the soup--.

75:16 Try to construct the scene so that there's a little more motion, a little more happening, and a little bit of problem solving even in that scene, if you run into them. All right? We're out of time. Mull next week, Brandon Mull's going to come. And so enjoy that, and I'll see you in two weeks. CLASS: (applause)