Brandon Sanderson's Blog, page 49
March 31, 2015
New novella: Perfect State
Today marks the release of a new novella of mine, Perfect State. This one is a bit different from anything else I’ve written, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Here’s the blurb:
God-Emperor Kairominas is lord of all he surveys. He has defeated all foes, has united the entire world beneath his rule, and has mastered the arcane arts. He spends his time sparring with his nemesis, who keeps trying to invade Kai’s world.
Except for today. Today, Kai has to go on a date.
Forces have conspired to require him to meet with his equal—a woman from another world who has achieved just as much as he has. What happens when the most important man in the world is forced to have dinner with the most important woman in the world? Perfect State is an action-filled novella about privilege, culture clash, and expectations.
Check out an excerpt here. The cover illustration is by the talented J.P. Targete, and you can get the novella now as an ebook (with no DRM) at the usual ebook vendors (see links to the upper right).
A couple years ago I put out a double edition of my novelettes Firstborn and Defending Elysium, and this year I’m doing the same thing with Perfect State and Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell. The double hardcover of these two novellas (they’re printed back-to-back, so there are two front covers) will start out as available exclusively at conventions, before going up on my website store sometime in the fall. If you want to pick one up, your first chance will be this week at Minicon in Minneapolis. Check my events calendar throughout the year to see what other conventions I’m attending.
March 30, 2015
Newsletter coming tomorrow + Updates
My almost quarterly newsletter is being sent out tomorrow; you can see past ones here. It will have an exclusive preview of one of my future books, so if you’re not on the list, now is a good time to sign up. If you fill in the “Metro Areas” field in the signup form, I will also send you an email when I’m appearing at an event in or close to those areas.
Steelheart was selected by the 2014–15 Georgia Peach Book Awards as an honor book. Thank you to everyone who voted to make that possible!
In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, Where is My Story Going?, we look at the middle of stories. You know that big long section between the beginning and the end where almost everything happens? We talk about how to use formulaic structures to help you get them to do all of the things that you need them to do without the story feeling formulaic.
Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Words of Radiance, Alice Arneson dived deep into the mechanics of not being dead anymore. This week, in Chapter 34, Carl Engle-Laird watches a ship sink in a storm made of Shardblades and people being jerks.
My assistant Adam has updated the Twitter posts archive for March.
March 24, 2015
Perfect State
God-Emperor Kairominas is lord of all he surveys. He has defeated all foes, has united the entire world beneath his rule, and has mastered the arcane arts. He spends his time sparring with his nemesis, who keeps trying to invade Kai’s world.
Except for today. Today, Kai has to go on a date.
Forces have conspired to require him to meet with his equal—a woman from another world who has achieved just as much as he has. What happens when the most important man in the world is forced to have dinner with the most important woman in the world?
March 23, 2015
Newsletter coming next week + Updates
I usually send out three or four newsletters each year; you can see past ones here. In the last couple of newsletters I included just for newsletter subscribers an exclusive preview of a future book, and that trend will continue with the next newsletter that I’m sending out next week. If you’re not on the list, now is a good time to sign up. If you fill in the “Metro Areas” field in the signup form, I will also send you an email when I’m appearing at an event in or close to those areas.
In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, Story Structure Q & A, Wesley Chu visits with us again for a Q & A on this month’s topic: story structure. Here are the questions:
Do you make a conscious decision about how to structure your story before you begin writing?
Is it necessary to use multiple structures (three-act, Hollywood formula, etc) in order to ensure that your story works?
What tools do you use to view your story’s structure?
What do you think about cliffhangers?
How do you come up with plot twists for your stories? (Answer: A blast from the past with Michael Stackpole! Season 1, Episode 19!)
What structures should I use to add variety to my writing?
Is there a specific amount of time you should spend on your introduction before getting to the inciting incident?
What do you do when you’re halfway through with a story before you realize the structure is wrong?
Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Words of Radiance, Carl Engle-Laird endured the storm with the help of Beowulf. This week, in Chapter 33, Alice Arneson follows the aftermath of the storm with Kaladin and the Kholins.
My assistant Adam has updated the Twitter posts archive for March.
March 16, 2015
New Writing Excuses + Updates
If you missed it, my novella Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell is available as an independent ebook. I talk more about that here.
In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, Project In Depth: “Parallel Perspectives”, we discuss the 13-page graphic story (“comic book”) found at the end of Schlock Mercenary: Massively Parallel and focus on its story structure.
Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Words of Radiance, Alice Arneson got to hang out with Kaladin and Shallan as the next highstorm approached. This week, in Chapter 32, Carl Engle-Laird talks about something almost completely unrelated. Again.
Minnesota residents and anyone willing to drive to Minneapolis! Minicon is coming up the first week of April and I’m a guest of honor. My full schedule is here.
My assistant Adam has updated the Twitter posts archive for March.
March 13, 2015
Brandon Mull Launch Party for Crystal Keepers Tonight
Just a quick note to say that tonight in the Salt Lake City area I’ll be at the launch party for my good friend Brandon Mull’s book Five Kingdoms: Crystal Keepers. Come join Brandon Mull and me along with: Richard Paul Evans (Michael Vey series), Chad Morris (The Cragbridge Hall series), Christopher Paolini (The Inheritance Cycle), and several others.
These launch parties that the other Brandon does are unlike any signing you’ve been to—hundreds of people, with hilarious comedy sketches and possibly even singing. People often say “I thought you said you were singing!” when I talk about a signing, but in this case someone might actually sing. Just not me. But I will be signing books along with everyone else at the end of the event, so come on down. It should be a lot of fun!
See the flyer below for details.
March 12, 2015
Goodbye, Sir Terry
I woke to the news that Sir Terry Pratchett has passed away. I knew this was coming, but—as with the passing of Robert Jordan almost eight years back—it still hit me like a slap to the face.
Many of you know of my fondness for Pratchett’s works. If you aren’t aware, here’s a piece that I wrote about him a while back. When I wrote it, I worried I strayed into hyperbole. Looking at it again, I now wonder if I didn’t say enough. Too many readers I’ve met, particularly in the States, have never given Pratchett a try.
The genre, and the world, just lost something wonderful in that man. Of all the writers I’ve read, Pratchett felt the most human. There was more truth in a single one of his humble satires than in a hundred volumes of poignant drama. Unlike most comedians—who use their humor like a weapon, always out for blood—Terry didn’t cut or bludgeon. He was far too clever for that. Instead, he’d slide down onto the bar stool beside us, drape his arm around us, and say something ridiculous, brilliant, and hilarious. Suddenly, the world would be a brighter place.
It wasn’t that he held back, or wasn’t—at times—biting. It’s just that he seemed to elevate every topic he touched, even when attacking it. He’d knock the pride and selfishness right out from underneath us, then—remarkably—we’d find ourselves able to stand without such things.
And we stood all the taller for it.
Sir Terry, you have my sincere thanks. I don’t think that, despite your many accolades, the world knows what it had in you. Fantasy certainly didn’t. Our glittering awards are made foolish and inconsequential by their disregard for you, though I doubt you cared much about them either way.
The most fitting memorial I can give is this: a request. For those of you reading this post, why not give this man’s legacy a try? If I had to guess which fantasy author of our era will be read most in the centuries to come, I’d lay my money on the works of Sir Terry Pratchett.
I suggest beginning your journey in Discworld with The Truth, Going Postal, or Guards! Guards!
Brandon Sanderson
March 9, 2015
Hugo nomination deadline, Shadows for Silence ebook release + Updates
Don’t forget, the deadline to nominate anything for the Hugo Awards (if you’re a member of the 2014, 2015, or 2016 Worldcons) is tomorrow! For more details see my award eligibility post here.
My Cosmere novella Shadows for Silence in the Forest of Hell is now out as an independent ebook! If you didn’t already read it in the Dangerous Women anthology, check it out! Here’s the blurb:
When the familiar and seemingly safe turns lethal, therein danger lies. Amid a forest where the shades of the dead linger all around, every homesteader knows to follow the Simple Rules: “Don’t kindle flame, don’t shed the blood of another, don’t run at night. These things draw shades.” Silence Montane has broken all three rules on more than one occasion. And to protect her family from a murderous gang with high bounties on their heads, Silence will break every rule again, at the risk of becoming a shade herself.
There’s an excerpt of the story here on Tor.com, and I shared some words on its inspiration here. The new ebook has a great cover illustration by Miranda Meeks:
In other news, in this week’s Writing Excuses episode, Q&A with the I Ching, Wesley Chu helps us literally shake up our structure. For those who aren’t familiar with the I Ching, it’s a collection of poems which you consult with numbered sticks. You ask a question, shake a random stick from the cup, and the corresponding poem holds your answer. In writing The Man in the High Castle, Phillip K. Dick used the I Ching to make plot decisions at crucial points. We decided to turn that, and our format, on its head, so we used the I Ching to ask us questions.
Last week, In Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Words of Radiance, Carl Engle-Laird got to read about all the pretty eels. This week, in Chapter 31, Alice Arneson hangs out with Kaladin and Shallan as a highstorm approaches.
My assistant Adam has updated the Twitter post archive for March.
March 6, 2015
Three Stories in New Formats
Words of Radiance launched in paperback this week, so if you’ve been waiting to grab it, now might be a great time! (The ebook price was supposed to drop at the same time, but due to a glitch that won’t happen until Monday or Tuesday.)
I don’t usually do much of a heads-up on paperback releases, but I figured this would be a good time to talk about a few other re-releases we’ve got going on. For one, Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell (the novella I wrote for GRRM’s Dangerous Women anthology) just had its standalone release in ebook. I’ll do a blog post on that next week in depth.
For now, I wanted to talk about a new edition of Elantris, along with making a bit of confession to you. You see, I’ve done something dangerous. The new editions of Elantris and Words of Radiance both made me confront some of the problems in the text, and I have decided to go ahead and fix them. (More on that below.)
Elantris 10th Anniversary
First, in relation to Elantris, May is the 10th anniversary of its release, my first published book! In celebration, we’ve been putting together a 10th Anniversary Edition, which is coming out later this year. It will be in trade paperback form (the paperback format which is more the size of a hardcover), and I’m hoping I can get Tor to print at least a few hardcovers for those who want to get them.
We’ve packed this edition with some cool extras. It includes the short story “The Hope of Elantris” as well as a new foreword by Dan Wells, a retrospective by myself, an Ars Arcanum appendix (as this was the only one of my Cosmere books not to have one), brand-new redone maps by Isaac Stewart, and a very short extra scene. In addition, as I mentioned, we’ve changed a few things.
Now, this is the dangerous thing I talked about above. We’ve seen in certain high-profile films that changes done by the creator many years later are controversial. It’s a slippery path. Part of creating a work of art is learning when to let it alone—most writers I know could just keep tweaking something forever. The quote (often attributed to da Vinci) that says “Art is never finished, just abandoned” is quite a true statement.
However, Elantris needed some attention. When I wrote it, I didn’t have access to a good cartographer who could make the continuity of my crazy map-based ideas for the story work out. I did my best, but it never quite clicked. The maps didn’t match the story, and the conceptualization of the ending was always kind of vague because of this disconnect.
Well, I have Isaac now, along with Peter who is really, really good with the minutiae of this sort of plotting. We’ve made two kinds of sweeping changes, then, to the text:
Map Continuity: We’ve had to shift the locations of some buildings and events as we’ve figured out a scale for the maps and for the city. We’ve tweaked the ending; the events are the same, but where certain things happen has been changed to fit. (Over the years, many of you have asked me about this, and I’ve had to admit that we just got it wrong.) This shouldn’t change the story in any significant way except that now it actually makes sense, but I thought you should know.
Language Changes: Peter has done a very, very thorough copyedit, and has made some stylistic changes to remove some of the quirks of my earlier prose. (Extraneous commas, for example.) Again, this shouldn’t change the story in any significant way except to make it more readable.
Right now the book looks like it’s scheduled for an October 20th release, but since that’s over half a year away, it could possibly end up coming out slightly earlier or later.
Words of Radiance Tweak
Moving on to Words of Radiance, as we were entering typo fixes for the paperback of this book, I made changes to a few lines near the end. This isn’t anywhere near as extensive as the changes in Elantris, but once again I figure I should be up-front about what I did and why I did it.
This part is going to have some spoilers for the book, so if you haven’t read it, please stop right here. I’ll put a number of blank lines here to prevent accidental spoilers. Scroll down if you’ve finished the book.
So, in Words of Radiance, I think the scene I worked on the longest both in my head and on the page was the final confrontation between Kaladin and Szeth.
There was something I wanted to do, and took a stab at it in the text, then backed off because I couldn’t make it work. It was important to me that Kaladin refuse to kill Szeth at the end. Kaladin is about protection, not vengeance, and once he realized that Szeth really just wanted to be killed, I wanted Kaladin to hesitate.
It didn’t end up working, and I moved on to a new version and submitted it. But this itched at me, and by the time the book was released, I felt I’d made the wrong choice for that scene. So I’ve taken this chance to roll it back to the previous idea, and written it in a new way, which I like much better.
The events are the same, except for that moment. Szeth is now killed by the storm instead of by Kaladin, which I think is more thematically appropriate.
The question this raises is about Szeth being stabbed by a Shardblade, then being resuscitated. I’m sad to lose this sequence, as it’s an important plot point for the series that dead Shardblades cannot heal the soul, while living ones can. I’m going to have to work this into a later book, though I think it’s something we can sacrifice here for the stronger scene of character for Kaladin and Szeth.
As I’ve said, it’s dangerous to tweak your work after it’s out. I realize this, and I hope you’ll give me some artistic liberty in this case. (Besides, with Tolkien’s after-publication tweaks to The Hobbit being so good, I think there is proof in the genre that changing the text here and there isn’t always bad.)
Thanks, and as always I appreciate you reading and supporting me in this crazy thing that I do.
Brandon Sanderson
March 2015
March 2, 2015
Writing Excuses episode on story structure + Updates
This month’s Writing Excuses syllabus topic is story structure. In Where is my Story Coming From?, we talk about where the story starts for the writer.
The deadline for the 2015 Writing Excuses Retreat Scholarships is fast approaching. You can see the application details for the Carl Brandon Society Scholarship as well as the Out of Excuses Scholarship here. The application period for both scholarships ends at midnight (EST) March 14, 2015. Here is what each scholarship includes: Full tuition, a bed in a double-occupancy room, and up to $500 of travel expense to and from our departure port in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Words of Radiance, Alice Arneson waded through one of the filthiest sewers of the wickedest minds of Roshar. This week in Chapter 30, Carl Engle-Laird reads about all the pretty eels!
I had my assistant Adam update the Twitter post archive for February and March.
