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

Hey welcome to week four 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 uh 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 webon uh Q&A for you guys so post your questions here in the comments about

plot best if you can reference the previous two lectures or things I talk in this um 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 fantasy the Q&A yeah 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 this is an excellent question um 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 um You don't have to promise big p plot until near the end of act one if you think that way sometimes you just do right again we reference star 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 one big ship little ship big ship's dominating little ship it's about the little ship blowing up the big Ship ah yeah um so right Star Wars does a lot of things like that that uh that really just kind of Click into place so um 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 uh 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 um 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 uh using her wits um and and indeed that is basically who Mulan

is all the way through you can give a promise of a character Arc like who is this character what do they want um what are they going to change and Become I do think that um 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 the journey they're going to go on and what they want to get and who they are blah blah blah blah blah right

um one of the things that uh you can also promise is you can promise if you do it right what your Standup and cheer moment is going to be um and that can be really handy for helping people get you know put up sometimes with the character getting beaten down because they know each of those times the character is be getting beaten down it is set up for that moment where they will be victorious um this usually involves um you know like let's use the original Captain America 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 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 um 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 get a stand up and cheer for this guy it's Coming you got to put up

with him you know um be in a SP spindly dweeb for little while uh but then after that he's going to you know the the the heart is more important than the body um and that sort of stuff so all of those are types of promises you can make down to the classic check offs gun right the classic check offs gun this is a story writing adage that says if you hang a gun on the gun on the wall and or on the m above the mantle um or on the mantle if you Hang a

gun up if you show a gun in act one you should fire that before the end of the movie is basically what I'm paraphrasing they 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 uh you can you can use those as red herrings for setups and a different kind of payoff where it's like You thought you knew what was happening you don't

but just 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 ride a one star or even worse the two stars the two Stars are the worst right that's when you really want to get an author you leave the two

star cuz the onear STS 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 um so so yeah um the the two stars are always like I wanted to like this but the author sucks um so uh what do you do if you feel your plot is too Unoriginal uh another good question um so if you are worried you're too unoriginal most of the time you should stop Str stressing about this 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 um this is if early readers are telling you your books to derivative uh if consistently you write books that feel a little bit derivative 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 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 um so but if this does bother you and if you are consistently getting it and you are established right this isn't your first book 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 example uh Stormlight Archive one of the big problems I had with way of Kings Prime uh which you can read for free if you want to do so for uh study purposes I don't think it's That good uh 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 kaledin did not in this book I had a pretty standard plot line young Spearman saves the king or the king's brother um earns himself a Knighthood and it's a story of him learning to navigate the Upper Crust of society you can do that very well it's a 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 UN original if you've read the way of Kings I'll try not to give uh too big of spoilers if you haven't but the entire revision of that um that story which kind of took it a completely Different direction was me saying okay 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 twists sake okay 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 affect ly in a way that makes your story more interesting that they that it something happens they're like the story is better now that this twist has

happened that's hard okay so if your story doesn't need a Twist don't feel bad not having a Twist Pride and Prejudice is not worse because they get together at the end Spoilers right but that doesn't mean you couldn't if you are kind of Board 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 a story sometimes about an author who broke in around the same time I did and my U books really started to take off and his um 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 and I don't even remember 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 um finds out their air to the throne and chases a magical object um uh that the book you know like that they 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 um but at that Point I was kind of done with the Terry Brooks Style of book and I 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 I'm like well this and this he's like you know I got that so many times in my reviews but the thing is at the 3/4 Mark I I twisted 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 I it it's really frustrating that I then get uh people not liking the book because of the very thing I was deconstructing the people that he thought would love his book were complaining I don't know if this 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 danger the people who are looking for a classic um ya style Quest fantasy what's Going to happen to them when they get

to the three4 mark they're mad 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 um what about the people who would love a deconstruction of the quest fantasy they get that get there because like myself they put the book down in the first third because they're like well you know this this isn't targeted at me um 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 fortun you to grows are writer so I do encourage you to 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 um and not have them put it down You know and 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 ah this reads like a standard Quest fantasy I know you uh author person I know where this is going I'm going to enjoy this real big when that kid who finds a magic sword you know turns out to be a demon and destroyed by it and we deconstruct everything and suddenly it's Like whatever right um so so yeah um there's my answer to you on that one if you feel your plot is um is unoriginal push yourself harder is answer number one uh number two transpose that plot to a new uh genre

and or a sub new subg genre and try to use the new sub genre's tropes to impact the story in interesting ways this is the 10 Things I Hate About You methodology right the Shakespeare Retelling um 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 always often ask yourself all right the standard story um 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 like you were the most powerful thing around and then oh sorry you were destroyed by the power of a mother's love right right like what if the dark lord won what if froto got to the end and Son's like my ring I lost that thanks for bringing it back it must have been really hard to do uh

anyway you're dead and I take over the world Right like that was the inspiration originally for MB um you can you know reverse this story on its head and the the secret is a lot of stories that reverse on their head a lot of deconstructionism will tell you what is it you're relying on what you're denying um you will need to be using those same narrative tropes just in interesting ways in order to actually deconstruct in a lot of uh 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 deconstructionist ism as it applies to uh to writing popular fiction um so yeah uh anyway uh yeah question over there uh for law of us writing our first books um I'd love to write a book and have a big series and have it going forever but for those books promises that are unfulfilled in that book yeah when your first time no no or okay good question so you're writing a big series um 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 uh depends on how you do it if we go back to Star Wars Darth Vader being defeated is like a Min promise fulfilled but not a big promise fulfilled and you're they're able to you know get away with that uh Lord of the Rings it's like the promise is we're going to we're going to destroy the ring We don't do that in book One spoilers um right and so basically readers will accept if

you are fulfilling some promises and putting off others right what is fellowship 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 Seven new writers run into this I'm 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 um 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 SQL 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 its own steelart is a complete story

mistborn is a complete story um I tend to do this with series Stormlight is not so much one right and I try to kind of make that uh promise but if you are looking at the plot ARS of Stormlight we do not get into solving the problem of the capital P plot of the Series but the story of the bridge cruise 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 the other way of course is to do it is

to do something that is a um is a more serialized series uh I know that sounds odd but you know uh one where each book is going to have its own complete Arc and can be read out of order um the 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 we talked last week about different plotting methods yes say you're just starting a project from scratch getting started your story but you're try to figure out which plotting method best your specific

you have any advice on approach yeah advice on approaching um if you want to try different plotting methods uh matching Them to a given story uh it's going to be really individual to you uh what have you tried in the past and what has worked for you in the past take what is worked if you're a new author meaning you've you haven't written your sixth book yet is what I would uh put as a newer author right um 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 does it work better if I lean in even more um Does it not work if if you're also a new writer like you may want to try the um Whose Line Is It 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 is going to be and you know you yes but no and uh that sort of stuff uh your way through an entire book um the alcatra books were written that way

uh I would brainstorm a bunch of things just like uh Whose Line Is It Anyway and say these All have to go in the book by the end uh go and I would not outline uh because I wanted to practice Discovery writing and things like that so if you wonder where the alra books came from that will not surprise any of you who have read them um where those books where those books come from uh 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 uh don't stress if you're not the type that's like I want to try all these if you have something that works just do it uh what would I do like I'd try the two extremes and then try to work my way uh into something that is a mix of them since most people I know are a mix the two streams being

you know Whose Line is it any way yourself your way through an Entire book um and and also World Builder disease you give yourself like you know 4 months depending on whatever and you just won't let yourself right uh 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 World build disease and plot and then see if that makes your book better or not yeah um when you're running overlapping story arcs how do you plan it so that everything

all the arcs come Together in that perfect stand of and cheer moment overlapping uh arcs how do you work them together so they come together in a standup and cheer moment uh a few tips number one is um 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 uh but a few tips one of the things that tends to stand up and cheer is when you can hit the um character arcs uh emotional payoff right before The uh the

kind of phys IAL 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 um the uh the bad guys because they have both made their decisions that's your standard you can reverse it but that's just kind of a rule of thumb if you can use that that internal Arc to then push you into the external Arc um give them the last Little bit they need those are generally stand up and cheer

moments the reason being that if you force out it way well 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 uh impactful decisions and those impactful decisions made them succeed that's usually what we

talk about when with stand up and cheer um right um there are things you're waiting for you can do them without as much character Arc you can do them by just punishing the character right so much that when uh mild spoilers when they 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 um that's you know they've struggled so much it's time to have a success um if you are balancing a whole bunch of plot lines another rule of thumb is you can't 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 better is better as sander lanch generally actually tries to stagger them it depends on the book so that they're coming in order but even a sander lanch like I can go too far um I've had to trim back books before um and in in revisions because there's too many twists too many things becoming uh fulfilled and sometimes you back up and say I'm going

to use this as the kind of a climactic moment at the two3 Mark for This character then they're going to fade into the background and then we can uh 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 but 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 uh pat on the head off into the uh to the to

the mist of time for you thank you for you know uh right Like that sort of thing can be really handy to do also uh so few things there let me get one more of these and then we'll do some more questions uh from the audience so all right because these are all really good questions um what are some common mistakes made when it comes to Exposition oh Exposition oh Exposition so one of the things so if you don't know what Exposition means um in a story particularly a 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 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 science fiction 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 um 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 uh 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 you can make the learning curve more

shallow by not frontloading exposition and by using Exposition well Exposition what when we use classic Exposition it is when the reader uh 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 to make your learning curve more shallow without impacting the sub genre and

art that you're trying to make right shallow learning curves good unless they inhibit the story you're trying to tell Stephen Erikson the story he's trying to tell did not benefit from a shallower Learning curve because that was part of the point uh way of Kings has a steeper learning curve than mistborn and so don't frontload your exposition uh Gone are the days where you would write a prologue that is a huge Exposition dump uh you can still find plenty of fine fantasy novels from the 70s and 80s that do that um 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 Maiden Butler dialogue this is kind of a a term we borrow from uh from the stage world where you know you would have the maiden Butler come on the the 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 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 you it as you know Bob uh dialogue so how do you do this right how do you write it um so moving it to dialogue will naturally make the learning curve a little easier making it part of something important to the characters that you get across briefly uh will make it will make your learning curve a little shallow it's easier to read if it's important to the characters if it's in dialogue or uh these sorts

of things I often say the grand skill of writing sci-fi f FY 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 Hobs right 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 a least a

little bit of vitamin in it right um you want your exposition to be the uh the spinach and the reader 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 uh I will get to you hands down for now it's it's actually kind of distracting so um so try not to um try not to get them bored try to make it meaningful and important and useful to the narrative uh

try to slip it in align here between dialogue I line in the dialogue uh 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 billbo is that it's a world fall of dwarves and wizards uh 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 um the nature of the one ring in order to have Bilbo be annoyed that Dwarves are at uh his door even if the nature of the one ring is your capital P plot it wasn't even when he wrote The Hobbit do 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 cuz Grandpa tolken did it which means we all can yeah he released The Hobbit then he's like

oh wow um as I've decided what the one ring is Gollum Probably shouldn't just not care about it i' better revise The Hobbit to make the One Ring more uh more relevant to what the one ring is so anyway all right I got you all right so I was wondering like if you have a huge like a lot of expedition Expedition it' be super steeping curb would spending like changing how long it takes to get that out so like extending it with that shorten the curve by like teaching them interested to okay learn more about

it And with that pulled it Forward yeah one more time I think I've got what you're asking okay I can't so if you have like what would be a lot of content to like have a huge steep you're going to have a steep learning C you got a lot of content is it better to expand that to let them okay good question this is this is an excellent question so you can do that it's dangerous because longer can be more boring right Uh 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 now those problems and Friends uh you understand and we can start on the fantasy world why portal fantasy tends to be uh consistently the most popular Middle grade uh variety of uh fantasy because you can establish some stakes and some character before a lot of Epic Fantasy just like no we're starting right in boom someone's getting attacked um steeper learning curve because you're

audience will accept it and also it's the art 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 or yes shallow whatever it can even out that learning curve but

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 a awful lot like Rural America um so that everybody who was reading Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern grow and things like that at the at the time these were popular is like all right I'm grounded I'm grounded in Randal Thor and he you know he lives on a farm with his dad and he's thinks there's

a girl in town that's cute that he might want to 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 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 uh with Lord of the Rings uh 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 tolken wrote like f what a fantasy world was was a little More nebulous to the general public um in fact I haven't yet been able to identify and someday I would like to see if we can find the 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 um and so what is the first one the the at

least first one That's you know that's 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 uh but basically all fantasy as a rule until around tolken referenced Earth in some way they even usually used it in the title right Earth sea um in order to just help with that learning curve and we don't have to do that as much anymore which is which is nice um and I I kind of say the rise of Uh nerd culture being just popular culture

has helped that people understand this is a fantasy book I understand what a fantasy book is uh that's really big I'll read the shorter ones about people kissing um but I don't mind that people read the shorter ones about people kissing because some of those also say well maybe I I like that big one now so thank you for everyone who's writing the fantasy books about people kissing um all right uh there are Some other questions go so when you have a book that's a lot of promises how do you like keep track of that

as you write what organizational method can you use make your Mak yeah what organization can you use I just have an outline right um in fact I should I should do this because I didn't do it uh last time uh 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+ usually I'm going to want one for each character one right I'm going to want an internal Arc

for them in some way most stories uh benefit from a character's internal Journey um 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 going to want one of uh a some of those But I'm also going to be like all right uh the main sort of plot uh that I'm going to be doing promises for or progress um I'm going be like all right what's what's the big one what is what is happening in this story um 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 submain ones so um kind of

this is like uh external plot and I'll usually at the same time have some character interactions um like I might have a romance uh and I might have an Information plot right a lot of um my books it's like how does the magic work um right right in way of Kings it's less there is an info plot but the info plot is with Shalon uh with kaladin it's not an info plot it's an apprentice plot except he has no master to teach him um 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 um and so I identify what these Things are and I start writing down what are my progress what are my big moments of progress usually I start at the end what's my stand up and cheer if there is or what's the kind of ultimate culmination of this and this and this and this and this and this and this uh and I identify all of these things and I start putting bullet points and brainstorming what are my steps along the way

what are signposts I know what each of these endings Is um how can I indicate that we're making progress what are the places where they backslide what are the big moments where you know you think it's not going to work that is 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 uh 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 many um information plot and I want to make sure I don't lose it so we're going to make a Point happen here and then I build chapters

out of that as I write you wouldn't go to my outline and be like here's chapter one here's chapter two 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 um and uh usually we can we put up an outline one of my old ones I think we have the Skyward outline um that you can See and the thing about this I generally work with them so you might

go to 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 it after I'm done with it and the book is done um and so all of this it gets exponentially more complicated the more characters you add um be aware of that uh it's pretty easy to write a one Viewpoint narrative in a 100,000 words even using all the World building and things I like to do really hard to do too if they're involved in the same exact plot

you can do it you me and the nightmare painters is a two um but they're both in the same plot if you're going to put two people on different planet suddenly you know it's it's it starts to magnify and it can be more than a doubling effect depending on uh on how much you're doing there so um yeah what program do you use for building your outling uh I use Microsoft Word for building my outlines yep I just use the document map and Microsoft Word uh I'm old school give me a piece of paper uh

in a notebook in the old days I would make them in a piece in a notebook uh nowadays it's mic soft word I know a lot of people like that screenwriting one um what's it called uh what's that scer scrier people really like scrier um and I know a lot of people that's handy for I do use an internal Wiki that's just a local Wiki For my team that handles all of the World building they I make an outline I write my book I hand the finished book to them and they put it on in

the wiki so I can reference it later on uh I don't have to do that anymore it's so nice yeah so all right yeah kind linking F do you like make your own Maps or do you just like PA that off does he just draw those yeah it uh do I make my own Maps um so it depends on the book and how relevant the spacing uh is so for Instance in Mporn I didn't generally have Maps it's taking place in one city and I knew that I'm like well this place this has to be

this far apart from this other one when I wrote the original draft of wave of Kings I I handrew one out cuz I knew I'm like I have to know how far it is from here to here um you know one of the things they'll get you for on the internet and rightly so is if you have armies teleport around um so do yourself a service have a map for scale If you're going to be moving armies uh you really want to have that ver similitude of realism you can cut some Corners with magic but

they should be established rules for your magic system uh I can get away with a lot in storm light 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 um they don't have to worry about water they you will have plenty of Water uh in RAR too much um right so there are things that I can do that make the movement of armies a lot easier for me um so that the logistics uh I don't have to run supply lines

nearly as much and things like that but depends on what type of story you're telling so uh yeah you follow up quick follow yeah are you excited for Civ am I excited for civ7 yes um I'm excited for C7 because it might solve one of the biggest problems in forx history which is it might make Me actually finish a game right if you played forx it's like well I feel like I'm done now I've played this for you know like and then you start a new one uh they look like they're looking at that I

am worried that they will too much abandon their coolest feature from six which was the adjacencies and the planning it was so much fun in six to sit down and plan your Empire and then build it step by step feels like writing a book we're 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 six so uh no more six7 questions uh we'll work over here for a while yeah what advice do you have for

like foreshadowing and internal consistency for Discovery okay foreshadowing internal consistency for Discovery writers fix it and post um 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 um and so as a discovery writer you can put that all in uh in fact I would recommend you finish your book you know what it's all about uh you know need to foreshadow say well now I'm going to use this thing Brandon talked about and be like all right

to 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 chapter and see put this in here construct a scene that does this um or if your foreshadowing was too much you're like well I need a red herring uh 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 for shadowing and tweak that uh one of

the things that I rely on early readers the most for is where 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 a cool plot twist it can be a complication they can 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 um 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 one or in some cases and book one for book five but if you but there's no getting around that unless you make the twist so obscure that nobody gets them however if everybody is getting it in Act one then either I need to

dial back on my fores shattering or I need to make it not a surprise Dune gets away with no surprises um this is the ER example of that uh but hitch talk would do this too um there is a difference between a Twist and suspense right of 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 um 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 that the characters don't have the information we have because we can see through the villain 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 okay I'm going to go over here and then I'm going to get this side because I've been ignoring them on the subject of twists yes some stories seem to have twists that come out of

shock yes there 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 um and some usually these are better as complications right um 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 uh 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 um in fact I believe westros is like Great Britain turned upside down the P right with um with like Ireland stapled on top Of it or something um 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 with a flavor of fantasy and I want to explore the brutality of being a ruler in the Medieval Era um and so if the story's theme is exploring the brutality of living in the middle evil

era than having people die in ways that normal fantasy stories wouldn't gains a lot of shock value uh and that enhances the storytelling because it makes it Like well who's going to be next No One Is Safe um 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 pull back um which is one of the big criticisms of the series it's a 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 um but I don't know uh Regardless um yeah 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 um 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 that's a Twist anyone could

do that uh does not take any skill um so make sure that that even the one 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 of 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 doesn't that absolutely hurt um 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 make to see who's alive and dead and usually what happens is the car the reader can enjoy the story certain uh 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 they're the Worst oh man readers if only we could have books without them um yeah so keep that in mind because what that means is a well foreshadowed twist that people spot yes it but still really like is going to be an imort 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 re uh change the second book so all your for shadowing the first book doesn't work anymore those books tend to be on shaky grounds by the ones that 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 so there's a little bit of a couple diet tribes 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 okay 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 okay uh you know what you need to foreshadow you're struggling to do it effectively all right 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 okay and you can help them lean into that so you're 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 um 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 okay um if readers were like this it fell out of nowhere your readers will follow the character's attention what the characters notice and say wow that's important the readers will notice and say wow that's important when the the

so you can focus reader 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 you know is a good person is not to have them be like yeah I'm a good person I I I I I I teach classes for for the University when I don't have to instead you're all laughing um instead having someone else say say Brandon is awesome is awesome see it I'm I'm joking but one of the reasons why the beginning of Stormlight I do not show

chapter one from kaladin's Viewpoint is because kaledin in chapter One is just too dang awesome and if you're in his Viewpoint it might be too much and it might feel like I tired of this guy he's too cool showing him from the eyes of someone else who he rescues changes all of that 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 um

as over the top As it might be from his Viewpoint and then you know you work in a few flaws you work in um some some backstory stuff and and there's a lot going on there but that I deliberately chose that it adds to the learning curve because it's a Viewpoint that is not the main character viewpoint but I thought the tradeoff was uh 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 characters like it does does not make any sense at all that such and such happened to the other characters do you does that now my my wrong is that odd and other characters like now that you mention it it makes absolutely no sense in our magic system um I'm sure I trust the author though I'm sure it'll make sense eventually like yeah yeah it probably will um 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 uh I've just pulled the curtain back

you're going to read missor different now yeah um why are there only 10 medals when 16 seems like there would be there's there's only half of a chart in the back of the book I don't know just one of those things I'm not 16 medals why would there be all right yeah sorry okay all right you got a question U what are your Tips to avoid a decline in quality after like a midpoint climax or the ending climax of a book one so book two how do you avoid uh a decline in quality after you've

had just an awesome climax in the middle of book one or book one moving to book two this is hard right sometimes it just sings uh and then you're like well that was a great book how do I follow that up uh that's a problem for future you make that first book as cool as it can Be the midpoint climax is more of a more of an issue um 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 I actually have done that before uh sometimes I'll be like well I just need to step up be a man uh um sing a Donnie Osman song We referenc Mulan we have to do again um and make the ending even cooler and that means for me it could Take a few weeks of rebuilding plot lines um something that I was just working on I'm like wow this protag this this I have like a uh a narrative and a plot I'm like this one is going to be awesome it is

so cool and I looked at the other Viewpoint and I'm like everyone's going to want to skip this one take 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 the How interesting and engaging that Viewpoint is going to be so that the balance really is uh is working once in a while I just don't care um this is the Tres of the emerald sea problem right TR the best climax happens right at the 3/4 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 3/4 Mark and I just decided this is a quirk of this book Right uh you're going to get these two climaxes and one is going to a little bit overshadow the other one um 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 um 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 yeah go ahead how important do You think it is to have the climax like I mean like you kind of you kind of said that but like personally I kind of like there to be a little bit longer resolution than I feel like it's typical of books but is that weird of me so you like to have resolution climaxes they're longer than they're 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 5000w Koda um right uh but at the same time going a little longer at the end like let's be honest nobody is skipping um 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 and even B right no one is skipping the dark night because it has three endings lingering right and it really does those are like both

movies that uh like are touted is among the best and they both really Linger on their endings You'll probably be fine 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 okay so there you are all right back here um if we're starting of like in the status quo and like the Ordinary World before we get

to the ins makit how do you put Through what are the ways they yeah okay this is an excellent question this is something that we're 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 mul Mulan answer you focus on what is cool about this character and show them doing something really interesting um to solve a problem that it 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 uh they spend that early time just making you really interested in how the character problem solves or how who they are so that when you get shaken out of that you know you're pulled in um another way to do it is to have the little the little spark of magic in there even if it's not you know you're you're not yet going on your big adventure but remember like Harry Potter Starts with Hagrid turning off lights with a with

with you know or is it it's Dumbledore Dumbledore pulling the lights and Hagrid riding on a bike right um like even if you discount the opening PR log to Wheel of Time which Tred to get around this problem Rand only spends one chapter before real weird stuff starts happening right um a lot of books that like Wheel of Time people like are kind of historic it's historically it's it's 90s fantasy written in the 80s it has Kind of that slower opening but that's not as Slow Burn as uh 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 um just giving us something to latch on to 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 um and You'll you'll find lots of uh 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 um was standing there trying to figure out how their dog disappeared why did their dog disappear or why is there dirt gently does this why is there um a sofa lodged in the stairwell uh 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 fullon fantasy you see that a ton too okay um all right we're going to go here but then uh you've already gotten one so

I need to let the um the peanut gallery have some more questions so I'm going to let you do and then for the last like few minutes we'll let you guys cuz I'm I'm predisposed to point the people whose hands are in my face the most not that I mind no no you're okay you're Okay I was gonna I wanted to let you know so I I would get to you but let's go over here yeah how do you make satisfy not character fail theal okay characters fail the goal they've been pursuing how do you

make it satisfying and not feel like total ripoff if they completely fail um 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 is a very different would be a very different movie if Lucas said I'm telling two stories and this is the end right um knowing that something is coming will help and if you're just going to have it just be completely failure at the end you usually um you want

either the reader to be like you know what that's what they deserve that's the little more literary fiction version of it right Everything goes wrong it's probably what they deserved right um like Butch casting a Sundance Kid getting mowed down it's like well you know guys I love you but you you you had this coming right um You don't get to live happily ever after you're going to get gunned down um right like those sorts of stories can be really satisfying if the reader 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 particular 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 that be like we just weren't strong enough if it's bittersweet something is accomplished but a lot of things weren't right like like the fact um that you Pandora's box right the fact that at the end of the uh Fellowship of the Ring Sam goes anyway and you get that little Victory right everything's gone wrong but Sam goes anyway

you've got this just like little glimmer and it also is a promise right uh where you're like okay you know the promise of the Ring would corupt everyone happened um but Sam's still there so you know you can find a lot lot of ways to navigate this and it really depends on what type of story you're telling and what how you want the 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 quot you had this coming uh 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 uh those are two different stories entirely and depends on what you're trying to do all right five minutes left anyone in the peanut gallery got a Question yeah go ahead oh memory loss plot lines they're they're so fun but they're so hard right um if you haven't read one of these project Hail Mary is an amazing one um yeah it's really really

good um and uh so these stories tend to work by raising questions and then answering them with little bits uh 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 it you discover some Things so it's like all right I am going to you know I'm in the bottom of the ocean I wake up and my I'm in like a habitat and the windows are cracked I need to pack 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 if there're 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 PE plots that they can solve really fast as you start to introduce the capital P plot and usually you have their memory come back uh 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 the reader being Gotten the reader there and understanding what's going on that's the best I can give you uh study some of the really good ones uh and you'll see you'll see how they do it yeah all right panut gallery on the way back uh I I'll let you go next you're in the middle P gy back there and then you okay yeah how do you decide between a different PL IDE how

do I decide between a bunch of different plot ideas um it's just a Vib thing when I finish a book and and I Have the time to write another one I just go with the vibe of whatever is most exciting to me at that point or what I have a deadline for may you be so lucky yeah what are some things you can ask like your beta readers or thoughts stats asking that give you good indicators on okay what are things you can ask your beta readers that give you good indicators on uh whether your

plot's working uh I mean it's the so Here's the thing um writing groups are bad with pacing beta readers tend to be good right writing groups are going to be reading this in chunks be careful about changing pacing too much based on uh on writing groups beta readers you can just have them say where are you bored that's really what you want to know um where are you feeling like you want to put the book down where is your are you 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 is a there's a there there's lots of famous adages about this like you know uh how do you make a book better you just take out the parts people don't like right or how do how do you make a great book you write only scenes that are good um there is something to some of these Ates 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 than try to avoid where you can two people walk down a hallway and they Converse and shot 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 uh but even if

you have them having supper and you can have like something that's going on with the dinner like the soup like I try to construct the scene so 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 mole next week Brandon mole is going to come um and so enjoy that and I'll see you in two weeks