BRANDON: I had a request out of my 15-person
workshop that I move world building up a little
bit, because they're starting new stories
and the world building comes up very early.
I'm going to do world building for the next
two weeks.
Isaac, Mary Robinette is coming when?
ISAAC: The 20th.
BRANDON: The 20th, okay.
We'll have this week and next week on world
building.
We'll then have Mary Robinette come and talk
to you about short stories.
Then we'll do the Q&A on world building, along
with some prose stuff the next week, and then
we'll do the two weeks of character after
that.
All right?
That's kind of our format going forward.
World building, I usually do about two lectures
on this, and today writer going to do the
lecture on Sanderson's Laws.
STUDENTS: Yay!
BRANDON: This is very fun for me to do, because
Asimov has laws, right?
Clark has at least one.
I figured I should have laws named after me,
so I did it.
Let me give you some background to what Sanderson's
Laws are and how they came about.
Sanderson's Laws started when I was working
on Mistborn, the first book.
I finished Mistborn 1, and I turned it in
and was working on Mistborn 2, and as Mistborn
1 was coming out, I started to realize that
I felt like I'd done something wrong in Mistborn
1.
Something wasn't working with the ending the
way I wanted it to.
I try to avoid too much in the way of spoilers,
but what happens in the first Mistborn book
is, we were at the climax.
The ending was happening.
Everything was going well.
I wrote it.
I sent it to my editor.
He wrote back and he's like, "I feel like
this needs a little extra oomph.
There's something missing here."
I thought, huh, what could I do to give it
a little extra oomph.
I thought, well, I've got this whole plot
where Vin is going to start learning to use
the mist to power allomancy a little bit,
because it's foreshadowing for some stuff
we need in book three.
I thought, well, I'll just move that forward
to this climax that allowed some new and interesting
thing.
Remember, this was the first book I ever wrote
knowing it was going to be published.
Even though I'd written 14 novels by this
time, I still was pretty much a newbie.
I'd never done a lot of these things before.
This was the first time that I'd really worked
with an editor on a book as I was writing
it.
Elantris had been finished years before, and
yes, I'd done a lot of editorial on this,
but it was a new experience working on Mistborn
1.
So I did this.
Moshe was like, "Great.
That works.
Gives it the extra oomph I need."
And we released the book.
When the book was being read, I started getting
feedback, and I went and looked at it, and
it really feels like I just added a new power
to the main character at the 95% mark in the
book, which is exactly what I did.
Absolutely 100% what I did.
I started to think about, a lot of people
will point at science fiction and fantasy,
that they don't like it.
One of the things that they will say about
it, that I don't think is true, and is a bad
reason to not like sci-fi/fantasy, is they'll
be like, "Oh, the author can just have anything
happen, and therefore your ending lacks any
sort of conflict because the author can just
make up a way to save them.”
Now, I'm totally okay if people don't like
sci-fi/fantasy.
It's a flavor of storytelling, and there's
no right storytelling and wrong storytelling
to like and dislike.
You can dislike things.
But I think this criticism doesn't actually
work, because any author in any story can
do this no matter what the story is.
It is not something that I think is actually
more prevalent in sci-fi/fantasy than any
other story.
Yes, in sci-fi/fantasy you can do what I mistakenly
did, which is invent a new power for a character
late in the story, and therefore deflate a
little bit of the satisfaction of the ending,
because it involves the character using something
you didn't know they had access to in order
to save the day.
But you can just as easily write a romance
where the primary tension is that Character
A is nobility and Character B is a commoner
and that's keeping them apart.
You could have, at the 90% part, a long-lost
uncle walk up and say, "Oh, by the way, she's
royalty.
You guys can totally get married," and evaporate
the conflict.
That's a sidestep of the actual conflict,
but you're solving it by putting a patch on
it, the same way I kind of put a patch on
Mistborn in a way that wasn't satisfying.
You can do that in a romance just as easily.
Doesn't matter what the conflict is, you can,
at the end of your story stick a patch on
it that will be a resolution, but an unsatisfying
one.
Having fluency over this is really an important
sort of storytelling mechanic.
Since I am a writer of science fiction and
fantasy, since I love fantasy, I framed my
kind of rule I came up with for myself to
help me understand why this problem existed
and how I could avoid it in the future as
a kind of little scientific-y sort of thing.
That's what I do write.
I don't write science.
I write scientific-y things.
With some development, I kind of broke this
out themed toward building a magic system
in a fantasy book, because I realized some
other things about it.
I'm going to write the first law up here.
You can find these online, though.
Isaac, I believe the essays are broken on
my website right now.
We've gotten emails saying that people can't
read them there.
We will get them up and fixed.
But Sanderson's First Law, and I apologize
in advance for my handwriting.
This is one where I actually want you to read
it, so I will try to write so that you can.
Your ability to solve problems with magic
in a satisfying 
way is directly proportional to how well the
reader 
understands said magic.
All right.
This is a technical way of explaining what
I just told you a story about.
Your ability to solve problems with magic
in a satisfying way is directly proportional
to how well the reader understands said magic.
This is something I thought about a long time,
how to phrase this in a way, because I was
understanding something about my fiction that
I hadn't before.
I had known that deus ex machina is a bad
thing.
If you're not familiar with this phrase it
means god from the machine.
Am I right on that?
It's an old Greek term for when they would
have the god save the characters at the end
of a play because basically there was no other
way to get out of the problem.
We use it in modern storytelling to mean the
author inventing a mechanism by which the
characters are saved from the consequences
of their actions in the late part of the story.
Inventing new magical abilities in the late
part of your story in order to get your characters
out of problems will often feel unsatisfying
for the same reason.
However, there's another story that goes along
with this, and this was when I was at my very
first Worldcon as a participating professional
author.
This would have been in Boston, so whenever
the Boston Worldcon was, around 2004-2005.
I sat on a panel at a big science fiction
convention.
I'd been going to these for a while.
I was really excited to sit on this panel.
I was put on a panel called How Does the Magic
Work.
How do we use magic?
I thought, this is perfect.
This is my thing.
I love magic systems.
I love interesting magic systems.
I am ready to go.
So we got on the panel, there was me and a
group of other people, and the moderator looked
down the line and said, "All right.
We'll just start off with what is your go-to,
fundamental thing you think about when building
a magic system?"
I thought I could just really knock this one
out of the park.
They asked me to go first.
I said, "Well, obviously, a magic system needs
to have rules."
I think I picked this one up from Orson Scott
Card's book.
I think he talks about it.
But either way, it was something that I just
had fundamentally believed.
A good magic system is a magic system with
rules.
I thought I was really just using the easy,
softball answer that would get the conversation
rolling.
But the other people on the panel looked to
me and said, "No!
If you put rules on your magic you ruin it."
I was shocked that the next half hour of our
discussion was me arguing with these three
other people, where I was like, "No, no, no.
This is foundational to building a magic system."
This was like you had just told me that one
plus one does not equal two.
I was flabbergasted that I had to argue this.
But through that discussion I actually started
to realize my way of doing it was not the
only way to do it, and in fact, a lot of the
stories I liked didn't explain the rules of
the magic to me, and maybe didn't even have
rules that the author relied upon.
I thought, well, how is this working then?
So I started to build this second sort of
philosophy about magic, which is that there
is, the way I see it, a kind of continuum,
a sliding scale that you can be on.
On one side is a sense of wonder about the
magic specifically, and on the other side
is problem solving with magic, or magic as
science.
Now, don't take this as law, because I bet
there are people who are able to do both.
But generally what happens is as you move
toward solving problems with magic and your
magic working more like a science, you move
away from a sense of wonder or mystery to
that magic.
It's very natural sort of thing.
The more you explain about something, the
more it moves to a different emotion and understanding
in you.
As I became a writer, my intersection with
movies and books that I read changed.
Instead of being in this sort of, "Wow, how
did they do this?"
I moved into, "Oh, I see what they're doing.
That's cool."
Those two emotions were kind of different
emotions.
I can be in awe of a story that's pulled off
well, because I know exactly how hard it is
to do.
But I'm no longer mystified about how the
author accomplished that.
It's kind of this same sort of thing.
I'm not sure if sense of wonder is the exact
right phrase, but I think you can get the
idea.
What's going on here is, as you move this
direction, you're able to solve problems in
a satisfying way with your magic.
What does this mean?
Why am I saying this?
Well, if you give your characters some tools,
and then get to watch the characters use those
tools to escape problems and to solve problems
and escape situations, then you as a reader
will feel really satisfied about that.
It's why my kids, when they were young, loved
to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse was it?
Where they're like, "Here are the three tools
that we are going to need today."
They set up, "Here are your three tools,"
and then as they go along it's like, "Oh,
one of our tools is a jack.
Oh, our car broke down.
Which of our three tools do we use?"
Now, you do a more complicated version of
this in your stories, but it's essentially
the same thing.
You are going to set up, here are the tools
the character has.
This character is able to teleport through
walls.
This character is able to drink a potion that
turns them into looking like someone else.
This character has this ability.
Then you are going to, on this side of the
magic, rely on the character's quick wits
to apply that tool to different situations.
It's a little bit like the heist archetype
that I talked to you about a couple weeks
ago, where you can take a certain archetype
where you give someone a group of tools, they
work on it, and then they rearrange them to
use them in different ways at the end.
That's the sort of thing you're doing with
a rule-based magic system.
But it's not the only type of magic out there.
In fact, there are a lot of magics where they're
searching for something else, and in this
case, it's a magic you don't know what it's
going to do.
The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse they had a mystery
tool.
"We don't know what this is.
It'll solve a problem eventually."
The mystery tool, or even things more mysterious,
happen a lot in fantasy books, and it doesn't
mean they're bad magic systems.
In fact, some of the best magic systems use
what I would call a soft magic, as opposed
to a hard magic.
A soft magic is you don't know the consequences
or even really the cost of using the magic,
and you are not certain you can predict what
the ramifications or effects will be.
Most of the time, the viewpoint protagonist
is not the one using the magic, or if they
are, it is a type of device that they are
using, or some sort of magical thing that
they can't predict the consequences.
The Monkey's Paw story is a nice little hybrid
story that's a little bit sense of wonder.
It's on the sense of wonder side.
You know you can make a wish, but you don't
know what the consequences of that wish will
be, and the emotion that story's relying upon
is that sense of wonder twisted on its head
to a sense of horror.
A lot of times, horror is twisting a positive
emotion into a negative emotion in some way.
Monkey's Paw, if you don't know this story,
people make wishes on this monkey's paw, and
they always turn out awful and horrible and
frightening.
As the book progresses you see the escalation
of the wishes that are getting made and things
like this, and it's just a brilliant story.
It is using a soft magic with just a little
bit of an edge toward, so you understand what
the characters can do, but they cannot control
consequences.
That sort of story, that sort of magic can
make fantastic stories.
I'll give you two examples of stories that
use both a hard magic and a soft magic in
the same story, and you can see how the contrast
of the two is very effective.
The first of these is Lord of the Rings.
Lord of the Rings uses for the ring what I
would call a magic that is toward the magic
as science with the ring.
It's still that one step away toward the sense
of wonder, or in this case also horror, because
you're not exactly sure what the ultimate
consequences of using the ring are, and you're
not exactly sure what Sauron can do with that
ring.
You just know it's bad.
But most of the storytelling mechanics of
the ring do a couple of things.
What does the ring do?
It turns you invisible.
Yep.
It turns you invisible and expands your lifespan.
What are the costs?
Sauron sees you and you turn into Gollum.
Right?
Basically these are the things.
The enemy can find you and you turn into Gollum.
Tolkien is very wise to put in the story example
of Gollum showing you exactly what the consequences
are.
That is a story that's very good at showing
you, look, if Frodo keeps this ring he turns
into this thing.
It's right here on screen.
It's actually a very hard magic system as
magic systems go.
Every time Frodo is using it, you can judge.
He's going to turn invisible, but here are
the consequences.
Lo and behold, in the story those consequences
are usually pretty dire, but they're anticipatable.
It's repeatable.
It's following the scientific method.
And the reader now knows the tool Frodo has
and the costs of that tool.
What can Gandalf do?
STUDENTS: (Calling out several indistinct
answers)
BRANDON: Yes.
Now, I'm not asking the people who have read
all the back material, which does move Gandalf
a little bit more toward the middle.
But in the books, Gandalf is pretty much all
the way over here.
You know Gandalf has power and can do stuff.
You're not sure what it is.
And a lot of times when he even uses his powers
he's offscreen.
He fights the Balrog offscreen, purposefully
in the books.
You're not sure what's going on.
You don't know what he's doing.
You know it will have huge consequences.
And lo and behold the huge consequences are
he dies and gets resurrected as Gandalf the
White.
You're not sure how that worked, why that
worked, the consequences.
You might say, "Wait a minute.
That feels like it's removing consequences
from the characters."
But that's not the purpose of Gandalf's magic.
Gandalf's magic is not-- Gandalf is not a
tactical nuke that you're using in a specific
place for a specific purpose.
Gandalf is there to make sure that the Hobbits
feel small, both metaphorically and literally.
That's the whole point of having Hobbits in
the story.
Tolkien was a student of the classic epics.
He did a translation of Beowulf once.
If you want to have fun, then go read Beowulf
and compare it to the Hobbit.
It very much felt like he wanted to write
one of these ancient heroic epics but put
a normal person in the role of the hero.
Instead of Beowulf we get Frodo or Bilbo.
In order to emphasize that, though he gives
Frodo a power that's a hard magic power, he
makes sure Gandalf exists in the story to
indicate this is a world of magic that is
much, much bigger than anything the Hobbits
can comprehend, and you as readers don't need
to comprehend it.
These two magics work perfectly in this book
hand in hand, giving both a sense of grandness
and wonder, and giving a tool to the main
character that he can use at certain times
in clever ways to escape problems and situations,
and then to have to pay for that later on
at the climactic moment of the stories, where
indeed, the costs that he has been paying
come due.
Another great example of this is Name of the
Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.
One of the reasons Name of the Wind works
so well, I won't speak about this as much,
is that he also has a hard magic and a soft
magic, and by including both of those he is
able to contrast.
If you haven't read the books, he is going
to a magic school, and one of the things they
do is build magical devices using sympathetic
magic.
It's a type of magic that people believed
worked in our world, that like affects like,
that actually works in his world.
The rules, it gets a little soft in there,
but mostly it's like, you do this, you get
this.
You do this, you get this.
Meanwhile, there's a professor at the school
who studies a different type of magic.
This magic is the naming of things.
This magic is explained as very powerful,
very mysterious, and likely to drive you crazy.
Of course, the main character is drawn to
this naming magic in the same way that a moth
is to a flame, and that's part of the tension
of the story is, is he going to suffer the
consequences that this professor has by delving
into naming magic, which the naming magic
is there to reinforce this story being about
a poet and a musician and talking about a
magic that is more like poetry and music.
You can't define it.
There is engineering class in his magic school,
and there's poetry class.
Yes, he can figure out engineering class,
but he wants to go to poetry because you can't
quantify poetry.
The two work very well in a scholarly setting
as kind of showing off these two different
disciplines and the contrast between them
in these two stories.
You do not need to have both in your books.
In fact, most books only have one.
I will say that you don't have to be all the
way to one side or the other.
In fact, usually it's very handy to be right
about here with even your hard magics, so
that you have the mystery tool, so that later
on if you're writing a series you can expand
the magic and leave some mystery in the first
book that can later on be explored and explained.
The further my books go, because I tend to
be pretty far on that side, the more the magic
gets explained, and the more the holes that
I've introduced in the magic intentionally
in the start, start to get filled in.
This is how you actually have, like, the ending
of Mistborn 1 could still work.
Because Sanderson's First Law is really a
law of foreshadowing.
If I had spent the whole first book saying,
"There were some Mistborn sometimes who were
able to do something really weird and we don't
know how, and we think it might involve this.
And here's this apparent contradiction in
the magic system that we think should work,
but we don't know why."
And then later on those things are reconciled,
and the character figures something out and
is then able to access the magic, that would
work.
In fact, most Asimov Three Law stories are
this way.
If you haven't read Asimov's Three Laws, he's
got three laws of robotics, this, this.
And then a robot is acting weird.
It's running around in a big circle instead
of doing what it's supposed to do.
What's up?
Well, let's go look at how the three laws
interact with one another and we'll find out
why this robot's programming has a bug that
is causing a contradiction between the three
laws, and therefore they're acting this way.
That is kind of one of Asimov's go-to storytelling
devices.
Of course, he also has the "robots develop
some weird sense of wonder thing, we don't
like it, so we destroy it."
So he does have sense of wonder stories as
well.
This is the Law of Foreshadowing.
The reason I say, "in a satisfying way," I
want to point out before we do questions about
this one, is sometimes you don't want to solve
problems in a satisfying way because you are
doing something else with this scene.
The example I often use for this is, you've
probably seen a lot of stories where the characters
in the first third of the story get into desperate
situation, there is no way out of it, and
then out of nowhere someone comes and saves
them.
Probably seen a lot of this.
It's done all the time in Hollywood films.
Why is this done?
Usually to introduce this new character.
That's one of the things.
You're like, we want to have a dramatic introduction
to this character.
We will have them save the other characters
and show off their cool abilities in Act 1
when the characters couldn't possibly have
survived.
There are other reason that narratives do
this.
Some of them are kind of lame, I'll admit.
Some of them are quite legitimate.
Introducing a character in Act 1 to save the
day is very different from having an unnamed
character show up in Act 3 to save you at
the end.
Han works because it's foreshadowed.
But Han, if he showed up in the first part
of the story, could just show up and save
them.
Be like, "Oh, yeah, this is my friend Han.
Now you know how cool he is."
Understand that these are all tools.
There's not wrong ways to do this.
In fact, Sanderson's Laws, I call them laws
because it sounds cool, and that's basically
the format that people use, but they are not
laws for you.
You don't have to follow these.
These are rules I made for myself to tell
the types of stories I want to tell, to get
the type of effect that I want to get, and
they might be helpful for you to understand
some sort of narrative things about using
your magic systems in a story.
So let me ask, any questions about Sanderson's
First Law?
Yeah.
STUDENT: This could be spoilers, but the end
of Oathbringer.
BRANDON: Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
CLASS: (groans)
STUDENT: And how that works.
I guess it doesn't have to be that specific
example, but how do you make it an ending
that is both satisfying and doesn't follow
that?
BRANDON: When I'm talking about this, when
I'm doing this right, the goal is that I am
foreshadowing that something can and will
happen, and that you could have figured out
what was going to happen before it happens.
Now, I might not always get this right.
It'll depend on your own personal read.
But when Sanderson's First Law is working
for me, it is you could have known and figured
out what was going to happen at the end ahead
of time.
With Oathbringer, I would argue the answer
was coming down to a character's decision.
You didn't know which way they were going
to decide, but you knew they could decide
either way.
The emphasis is, if they decide one way something
happens, and if they decide another way, something
happens.
The setup for this is very different based
on situation.
Let me explain.
I've got a good story for you to explain this.
The story is the two Lord of the Rings films,
movie two and movie three.
Now, movie two of the three is my favorite
of the Lord of the Rings films, and part of
this has to do with the defense of Helm's
Deep.
Now, in this story, what happens is characters
go to Helm's Deep to defend it against an
Orc, Orci, whatever, invasion.
They know that this is kind of one of their
last stands.
They are in serious trouble.
The setup ahead of time is, Gandalf says to
them something.
You guys remember what it is?
STUDENT: "Look for me the morning of the third
day."
BRANDON: "Look for me the morning of the third
day," is that what he says?
Fifth day.
"Look for me the morning of the fifth day."
What's that?
You watched it last night?
“Look for me at the morning of the fifth
day.
Look for me, and he rides off.”
The setup for that situation is, if we survive
five days, Gandalf will save us.
Now, the narrative does everything it can
do to make you forget that, by showing you
how terrible the situation is, by making them
fight to the very end of their wits, and their
strength, and their exhaustion.
They are basically defeated.
But at the end they go out for a final charge,
and then the sun rises, and then it plays
Gandalf's "Look for me on the morning of the
fifth day," and Gandalf appears.
They see him, and then an army comes up behind
him.
Now you've seen this army leave, so the pieces
were there, but the setup for the characters
was not "You need to defeat these Orcs or
else."
The setup is, "If you survive this amount
of time, you are okay."
In the third movie, this setup is not done
the same way.
They are defending Minas Tirith.
It is set up as, "If we don't protect Minas
Tirith, we are doomed."
And then Aragorn goes off to ghosts.
And then as they're about to fall, Aragorn
shows up with the ghosts and saved them.
On a kind of strict outline basis, these two
are the same.
Yet in the Aragorn saving them with the ghosts,
I felt just really kind of let down.
I'm like, "Oh, okay.
I guess they're okay.
It's still a great film.
Yeah, whatever."
And in the middle film, every time Gandalf
comes up over that ledge as I'm watching it,
I can barely keep the emotion in.
When the light comes down behind him and the
Orcs are like "Aaugh!"
It's just beautiful.
Every time when Aragorn shows up with the
ghosts I'm like, "All right, we're done having
fun with Gimli and Legolas bantering about
who killed what.
We're done with this.
Okay, we're done.
So I would ask you, why do I have such a different
emotional reaction to number three than I
do to number two?
This is about promises and payoffs.
In both the Tolkien, or actually this is Jackson,
because they don't happen exactly the same
way in the books, in both of these Jackson
is solving a problem with an external force
that is protecting the characters from the
consequences that are coming toward them.
But in one of them, they are promised if they
can do this, they will receive this.
In the other, they are promised, "You need
to survive.
Oh, you didn't?
Okay, we'll just save you anyway."
Now, it is obviously much better done than
that, because it's a fantastic film, even
the third one.
But when I am looking for this to work, it's
not necessarily that you need to understand
exactly what the magic can do.
You need to understand what the setup is.
For instance, a lot of stories will say, "I
feel like if I can solve this problem with
the magic I will receive a dump of understanding
about everything that will let me save the
day."
If you have set that up for the reader, if
they figure out this problems and then that
happens, the reader will be fine.
They're like, "Yes!
This is exactly what I was promised."
I
f they fail to figure that thing out, they
fail to make the decision, they fail to achieve
what you've set up in your narrative for them
to do, and then they still succeed, well,
then you're going to need some other way to
make that work, and you totally can.
But in that case, that's where Sanderson's
First Law is not really applied, if that makes
sense.
Again, I'm not perfect at this.
So you can totally read one of my books and
say, "You know, Sanderson, I don't think you
completely pulled it off.
I don't think you did the setup the right
way I needed to for this ending to work."
But this is what I'm trying to do, if that
makes any sense.
And that story helps me kind of explain how
I view this.
Other questions about this?
STUDENT: In regards to setup, how do you explain
your magic in an exciting way without info
dumping?
BRANDON: Yes.
How do you avoid the dreaded info dump?
Did I tell you guys last week what I was doing
with the Mistborn screenplay?
I told the little class, didn't I. I didn't
tell you guys.
I'm writing the Mistborn screenplay right
now.
CLASS: (oohing and ahing)
BRANDON: Ah!
Yes.
Ah!
STUDENT: How close is it?
BRANDON: How close is it?
It's not that close.
Basically, me writing the screenplay is not
what you want to have happen.
It means that I've given up on Hollywood writing
the screenplay.
I'm just going to do it myself.
I am not an expert screenwriter.
I've only written one screenplay before in
my life, so this will be number two.
So I'll need a lot of help to even make it
work.
But fortunately I have some good help from
some friends in Hollywood who are very good
at screenplays, who are giving me advice,
and I've done some brainstorming sessions
with them.
So I am approaching how to do this.
One of the things I ran into is in the book,
this isn't too much of a spoiler for the book,
in the book, Kelsior takes Vin, Kelsior's
the mentor figure, Vin is learning the magic,
out into the mist to explain how the magic
system works.
In a book it actually works pretty well.
It's like, instead of sitting down in the
classroom, he takes her out and says, "All
right, let's try this and experiment with
this."
She's like, "All right.
We'll try this magic power.
We'll try this magic power."
That alone takes it away, takes it several
steps.
One thing you could do is include an encyclopedia
entry on the magic you're doing.
That's your worst choice.
Choice number two is to have the characters
sit and talk about the magic and get it explained.
That's still a pretty bad choice, but at least
it's moved to dialogue.
Choice number three is, let's go out and experiment
and having problems making it work, and the
teacher instructing them.
That works pretty well in the book.
In the screenplay I don't have time for that,
and it would work less well on screen.
So what did I do is I combined that scene
and the scene also early in the book where
Kelsior sneaks into House Venture to steal
a bead of atium.
In the movie version, these were the same
scene.
Vin's followed him.
She's like, "You promised to train me."
He's like, "All right, baptism by fire.
Come with me and we're going to try these
different things while we're robbing these
people."
So by overlapping those scenes, suddenly there's
way more tension to "Now you've got to learn
to do this, and if you don't, that guard is
going to alert us, and we'll all be in trouble."
And when she screws up he can help out and
things, but now there's a tension to the scene.
And the scene combines two scenes and it gets
way more active and interesting because the
reader's like, or I guess in this case really
the viewer's like, "Oh, now there's some real
consequences on the line to this same sort
of project."
The same thing is happening, practice, same
sort of practice, same thing is happening
as happened in the book, but in a situation
with increased tension.
That is also a good way to make sure this
happens.
Now, you have to balance that.
Because one of the things you risk when you're
bring this into a tense scene is that the
reader might get lost and confused while and
action sequence is happening, which is generally
a bad idea.
Fortunately, on film I have all the ability
to visualize a lot of this, so I don't have
to explain it in the same way as I do in a
book, which makes that scene work.
One of the biggest challenges to writing science
fiction and fantasy is how you get across
your world building elements in a way that
is not boring.
To do this you need to construct your scenes
deliberately, in a way that gives you a chance
to not just show the magic working, but to
show character and setting details while you
are explaining the magic in some way.
In fact, the point of the scene might be to
explain the magic, but your emphasis in the
scene should be making sure the character
is interesting and you're showing as much
or more about the character as you are about
the magic, or at least you are providing excitement
equivalent to that.
Try to do multiple things at once, and make
sure you are keeping your focus on the character.
All right?
Okay.
Let's move on to Sanderson's Second Law.
All right.
Sanderson's Second Law comes about because
I was sitting and thinking about powers that
I put in my books.
This one also kind of relates a little bit
to Mistborn.
I was at a book signing at one point.
I spent a lot of time thinking about, what
are new powers?
What are new things I can put in my books
that are going to be different?
Someone came to me at a book signing once
and said, "Hey, I love Mistborn.
It's like a whole book full of Magnetos."
And I'm like, "Wait.
Oh, wait, that's just basically Magneto, isn't
it?"
Like what are Mistborn?
You take Magneto, you mash them together with
"these are not the droids you're looking for
because they can manipulate emotions," and
you've basically got Mistborn.
I was like, "Oh, wow, am I a hack?"
As a writer, expect that question to pop up
in your head frequently.
"Oh, no, am I a hack?"
The answer is no, you're not, because I don't
even really like that term.
If you are seeking to write stories the way
that you would want to read them and enjoy
in your stories, you are not a hack.
But there's this thing of, "Am I original?
I thought I was original, and now I realize
I'm not."
Well, that's a completely different story.
You are probably going to worry you're not
original too much, because the end of the
day, the most original thing you can add to
a story is your perspective, and that is unique
to you.
Now, the more you write, the more you will
realize how to not be derivative.
Because when you start off you will be derivative,
and that is generally a problem and something
you want to avoid.
The more you write, the more you'll learn
to put your own stamp on things.
But generally, experienced writers worry about
being derivative well past when it's not even
a consideration for you at all.
Okay?
If you're worried about it, see if some early
readers say you are.
Learn how to tweak things to make them your
own a little bit more.
Sanderson's Laws might help you.
But don't stress this as much as perhaps you
might.
But what I realized is, I'm like, "Well, how
did I come up with allomancy?
Why did allomancy work?
Why did I enjoy it so much?"
One of the things I landed on was this idea
that allomancy, if you haven't read the books,
you can push on pieces of metal and they'll
fling you up in the air.
Basically, if something's heavier than you
are, if it's attached to the floor and you
push on it you go the other direction.
It's vector physics used as a fun magic system.
If you push on a coin it flies away from you,
but if it hits something heavier than you,
then you'll launch backward.
Equal and opposite reaction, right?
This was really fun to write.
Why?
Because of Sanderson's First Law sort of stuff.
Making the character stretch with the tools
they have rather than solving the problems
externally was a real blast to write and it
made this writing more exciting, more interesting
to me, thinking how can I use this tool in
a way the reader's not expecting but they
could have anticipated is very fun to me.
So I spent a lot of time in that space.
I realized, though, that allomancy is just
a really lame form of flying.
Like, if you could fly, then that would just
be strictly better than launching off of something.
If you had full telekinesis, you could just
move things around wherever you wanted, that'd
just be a better version of allomancy.
And yet I've read books with that, and the
magic systems have been less fun.
So why is that?
And that was kind of Sanderson's Second Law.
Sanderson's Second Law is that flaws or limitations
are more interesting than powers.
Doesn't mean that the powers aren't interesting.
Like the question of "What if you could do
this?" is a great story starter.
What if you could fly?
Where would you go with that?
But in developing a magic system, building
in the flaws and limitations, and I'll say
costs, is generally more interesting and creates
more storytelling potential than the powers
themselves.
For instance, if I said to you, "You can fly,"
that might send you along some interesting
paths in telling a story.
If I said, "You can fly, but only as long
as your parents are both sleeping."
Then suddenly you're like, "Oh!"
It's a very different story, right?
This suddenly takes us into a different direction.
"Do my parents both need to be alive?
But they both need to be asleep?
Do I now move to the opposite side of the
world so I can consistently be a, during the
day when they are sleeping?"
Or come up with whatever, fly.
You can have the classic, like what is the
one that Scott Card uses in his book.
You can use the magic, but if you do, one
of your living relatives will be killed.
Suddenly, that's what the story is about.
The Wheel of Time has a great example of this.
All these mystical, wonderful powers, but
the more you use them, the more likely you
are to become insane and kill everyone you
love.
In fact, we start with the prologue showing
someone who has gone crazy and killed everyone
they love, so you understand the stakes and
consequences right from the get-go, which
was a brilliant move.
It's the same thing as putting Gollum in your
story so you can see what the character will
become.
But the flaws and limitations and the costs
are where generally your story happens.
Superman has classically been a very difficult
character for people to do films about.
We had one and a half really great Superman
films, and then we've had several films that
have had really great parts, but the authors
of the films have struggled with making those
Superman films click with audiences.
And this kind of comes down to the fact that
people are like, Superman has too much power.
It's too hard to write a story.
And yet I watched as a young man an entire
series about Superman that I loved, and I
still think is really fun, even though it's
a '90s show, so it's way campy.
That's Lois and Clark.
You'll see that Superman works really well
on the small screen.
There have been adaptation after adaptation
of Superman or Supergirl that have been really
fun stories to tell, and that generally is
because the people telling the small scale
story have such limited special effects budgets
that they can't make a big spectacle of Superman
punching someone harder than that person can
punch, and so they have to say, "Well, what
else can we do?"
And Superman stories generally fall into one
of three categories.
The first one is what I just said.
Someone has shown up who can punch harder
than Superman.
Oh, no!
That's where the movies tend to go a lot.
What is the other Superman story?
Somebody has kryptonite.
Oh, no, I don't have my powers anymore.
What is story number three?
I am unable to use my powers effectively to
solve this problem.
Either someone who is weaker than me is in
danger so my powers, now they don't have the
powers, or, I would really like this person
to fall in love with me.
My powers don't give me that ability, except
at the end of the second film, which is why
there's one and a half good Superman films.
Or I guess now that's the kiss of forgetfulness.
But you know what I mean.
But Superman II has some goofy super H stuff
in it.
I still love it, but it has some goofy super
H.
Okay, story time.
Early in my career, this has nothing to do
with anything, early in my career, I was guest
of honor at a con up in, like, North Salt
Lake or something, and they're like, "The
local news station wants to have you on the
news on the morning show."
I'm like, "Wow, this is really cool.
I've never been on the news before.
That's great."
They're like, "Yeah, but they're going to
invite several other people, and you're all
going to be on TV."
I'm like brand new.
I'm like, "Be on TV!"
So I show up and who's going to be on?
It's me and Ursa, the Superman II villain,
the one that's a woman, and a group of Storm
Troopers.
And the notice thing was us just standing
there, and they're like, "Look at these weirdos
at this science fiction convention.
You should go meet them."
It was actually a fine experience, but I'm
like, "Wow, my now claim to fame is being
on TV with the villain from Superman II.
Not that one, not that one, but that one,
and some Storm Troopers."
Somewhere, someone has that clip of me standing
there awkwardly, being like, "Oh, yeah, I
guess we are the weird-- the zoo has come
to town and we wear Storm Trooper armor."
She was very nice, by the way.
But that's neither here nor there.
The stories that people look to tell about
Superman I think are instructive to us because
generally they are looking to tell stories
about things that Superman's powers don't
really influence.
In fact, my favorite episode that I remember
of Lois and Clark was, like, there was this
robot who had kryptonite.
They're like, "We're powering it by kryptonite
so if it punches Superman it'll take away
all his powers."
But the whole rest of that story, this robot's
here, he's dealing with something with Lois,
which is really interesting and engaging,
because it's character relationship stuff,
and his powers come into play almost not at
all.
They do this, they have this thing, and at
the end of the episode they're like, "Oh,
yeah, you have to go fight this robot."
He's like, "Oh, right, I can fly, and I have
laser vision."
So he flies up and he lasers the thing and
then he flies away, and it takes, like, 10
seconds.
That is writers who understood that Superman
punching harder than something is not as interesting
as the fact that he has galactic-scale godlike
powers but can't interact with the human world.
He's still just a nerd who can't make relationships
work.
That's why that show worked.
Now, what does this have to do with?
Well, when you're developing your magic, naturally
a lot of your stories are going to err toward
conflict.
So they are going to err toward one of these
kind of three stories.
Either the character is not skilled enough
with their magic yet and needs to level up.
Or, they need to find something that's not
working in the magic and fix it so that they
can then use their magic the correct way.
Or, the magic is not working right now.
"What do I do?"
Or, the magic can't solve this problem.
It can maybe help me with the surrounding
things, but I need to then find a way to solve
this problem using my other attributes, not
just my magic.
Those are going to be your three paradigms
for telling stories about the magic.
there are others.
But those are kind of the three catchalls.
All of those deal with this idea of your flaws
and your limitations are a big part of why
those stories are working.
I view these three things as three different
things, and I also, they're just my definitions
that I talk about.
But I also view them as kind of larger storytelling
rules, just like the first one's really rule
of foreshadowing.
This is kind of about your characters also.
Your character's flaws and their limitations,
and the things they're willing to do and not
willing to do, and the costs of certain actions,
are where your stories are going to happen
about your characters.
Flaws, basically, are things the character
could change, or the magic you don't understand
yet, and with more application of effort or
character change, you will be able to fix.
For instance, I will see a flaw as, in Elantris
the whole story is about a flaw in the magic.
The magic stopped working 10 years ago.
We don't know why.
People used to get divine powers.
Now they get cursed for eternity, and they
become zombies.
The whole story revolves around there's a
flaw in the magic and we don't know what it
is.
Something's broken.
That flaw is what I build my whole story on.
But in a lot of stories there's also this
flaw of, we don't understand this part of
the magic.
Or, you are not good enough at the magic yet
to do what you need to do.
You need to practice.
If they character applies themself, if the
people apply themselves, there is a solution
to this problem somewhere in the narrative.
Same sort of thing with the characterization
thing.
A flaw in your character is your character
doesn't trust people.
Your character has good reasons for not trusting
people, but they really need to learn to trust
their thieving crew, because these guys are
actually good.
Through the course of the story, you are going
to learn to trust again so that you can actually
have a relationship with this guy you're falling
in love with.
That is Mistborn's theme.
There's a flaw in the character.
That doesn't mean, again, the character is
responsible for that flaw.
Sometimes life has beaten people down.
But it is something you can work on and fix.
A limitation is different for me, both for
a character and a magic system.
The limitation of allomancy is you can push
and pull only directly away from yourself
or directly toward yourself, center of gravity,
or center or mass, or whatever.
The narrative is now making you think, the
character's need to figure a way to fix this
problem.
It's just a limitation of the magic.
You work with it rather than you try to fix
it.
For a characterization, a limitation might
be something like, you were born with one
arm.
The narrative, you could imagine narrative
where this character's on a quest to get a
robotic arm or something, but most narratives
are like, you've been born with one arm, you
want to play in the NFL, you have a limitation
you're going to have to work with.
There's nothing to fix.
It's not that if only you'd been a better
person you wouldn't have one arm instead of
two?
But that's not the theme of the narrative.
The narrative is about this person who has
a handicap needs to work within this handicap
in order to achieve what they want to do.
Magic systems are the same way.
The magic system has this handicap, this limitation.
You're going to work with it.
And then cost.
Cost doesn't play as well with character as
it does with magic.
It's just kind of a good rule of thumb to
ask yourself what is your magic cost.
But you can also deal with this in character
by saying, if character takes this action,
what is the cost to them emotionally, physically,
mentally, these sorts of things?
You can set up that if character makes this
decision it's going to be very difficult for
them and cost them something, and that's really
good tension.
The same way with the magic system.
The magic system where if you have this magical
power, but every time you use it one of your
next of kin dies, that is a really steep cost.
You can vary these costs depending on how
much you want the magic to be used and what
the role of the cost is in the magic.
A lot of times, and this is just fine, but
a lot of times magic systems will write one
of the costs as being equivalent to the bullets
in a gunslinger's gun.
It costs using this resource, and the character
will run out of it when it's dramatically
appropriate that they do.
STUDENT: Stormlight.
BRANDON: Stormlight, that sort of thing.
Very common to use a cost like that with the
magic.
The reason that those sorts of costs are fun
is because they can have narrative tension,
but also you usually can tie them into the
economy really interestingly, and you have
a legitimate reason if you want to tell story
number two, character doesn't have their powers.
You don't have to invent a reason why they
don't have their powers.
You just deny them the resource, and now getting
the resource can become part of the narrative,
where you can set up your story as, "If we
can get this stuff, then I can solve the problem."
And of course, you're really telling, generally,
in those cases, a different story about the
character's story, and the getting the stuff
just becomes a McGuffin for the plot.
But it leads to a very useful method of being
able to tell versions of story number two
with the magic.
But it also can tie things into economics,
and you can add a social dimension to it in
that case where rich characters are able to
use the magic more.
Wow, theme!
There's all sorts of things there.
But you can also come up with very strict
costs, which themselves can be really fascinating
stories.
You have three wishes.
You're going to make all three wishes, but
they're all going to go wrong, horribly wrong
in some way.
Go.
Well, okay, we have a very strongly limited
magic that also is leading to a horror story.
You can vary the cost to depend on how you
want your story to go.
But a lot of times your story is going to
be about your flaws, limitation, and cost,
either in character or in the magic system.
Any questions about rule number two?
STUDENT: With limitations, like not being
good enough, how do you do a story about that,
which is something about, like, they don't
have enough in the story?
BRANDON: It depends on the type of story you
want to tell.
It kind of depends on the character arc the
character is on.
If the character arc is, you need to get better
at this, I frame it in the story as a flaw,
not a limitation.
I narratively structure it out, if the character
will do X, Y, and Z, they will overcome this
ignorance they have and be able to succeed.
Usually you tell these stories in the "I showed
up to fight Darth Vader, and guess what happened?
I lost my hand and now my entire world is
shot.
I'm going to go train some more so that next
time I can fight Darth Vader, and I'm going
to train in a way that isn't just about battling
the sword.
I'm going to train in a way that I use the
revelation."
That third movie works because a flaw has
been overcome in Luke where he realizes that
just slamming his light saber against Darth
Vader is not the way to win that battle.
But it could also be couched as a limitation.
I used this one in The Rithmatist.
In The Rithmatist, certain people have magic,
certain people don't, and someone who loves
the magic doesn't have it.
The story is framed as a "You aren't going
to get this thing, because unfortunately life
isn't fair and the people who might be really
good at something sometimes just aren't born
into the privileged situation where they can
use it, like you weren't.
So let's find a way that you work with that
limitation that is satisfying."
That story is not about the character overcoming
a flaw.
It is working with a limitation.
I tell very different climaxes for those two
stories, even though they're basically about
the same thing.
That would be my response to you.
What do you want the character's journey to
be?
What do you want your climax to look like?
How do you want your stand-up-and-cheer moment,
or your sit-down-and-cry moment to feel?
Yeah.
STUDENT: I'd like your opinion on low costs
that make a character more quirky.
BRANDON: Low costs that make a character more
quirky?
Do you have an example?
STUDENT: For example, let's say Luke can use
the Force, which is obviously one thing, but
say that you could throw in that he never
loses in that space chess game.
BRANDON: Right.
Luke never loses in that space chess game.
He's got a quirky-- So you're asking, can
I give someone a power that doesn't really
have much of a cost or limitation, but it's
just there to be fun?
Absolutely.
In fact, it also depends on if you're looking
for-- like, that's doing something more like
sense of wonder.
You're characterizing with this thing, and
you're using it for humor, for emotion, and
things like this, and not for problem solving,
and in that case, great.
You're going to run into a problem where if
your story then becomes about whether someone
can win the big space chess game, and Luke
isn't the person they choose to go play in
that space chess tournament, that's where
you have problems.
Sometimes you give someone these quirky powers,
and then as the story progresses the readers
start to ask more and more, "Wait a minute.
Why aren't the eagles flying them to--" Right?
There are explanations, but the fact that
a lot of people ask that question means that
the explanations were not satisfyingly presented,
and that was given, it's more a quirk of Gandalf.
He knows the eagles.
It's more a sense of wonder.
But then those two things intersect, and people
start to ask.
"Wait a minute!"
And that's your problem with that.
Does that make sense?
All right.
Let's go ahead and move on to rule number
three.
There's three of these and a Zeroeth Law.
All right, Law Number Three.
Law Number Three comes from me when I was
working on trying to build the Stormlight
Archive.
Now, the history of the Stormlight Archive,
if you're not familiar with it is, I think
I told you guys about it before, but I wrote
the book in 2002 before I sold Elantris.
This book, I failed in writing it.
For those who haven't read the book, the Stormlight
Archive is a large epic, full of a large cast
of characters, with a very different world
from ours.
There is a lot of bringing people up to speed
on the world building.
There's a very steep learning curve.
There's a lot of information to get across.
Plus, I wanted to do some big thing where
I had tons of characters.
I'd been reading The Wheel of Time.
I'm like, "There's so many characters.
I want to do something like this."
The first draft of Way of Kings was way too
expository, meaning I was just dumping information
on you, and it started the character arcs
of multiple different characters and didn't
finish them, because the book, if I'm trying
to do 10 character arcs or whatever it is
I ended up doing, and I only got through 10%
of each of them, instead of picking a couple
characters and getting through their arcs.
It made for a very unsatisfying book.
But in 2007, a very large freight train called
The Wheel of Time smashed into me unexpectedly
and carried me with it on a long journey that
I had not been expecting mere days before.
That changed my career dramatically.
TOR, as I had finished up Warbreaker and turned
it in, was like, "What are you going to do
next?"
I'm like, "This feels like the right time
to do Way of Kings, if I can fix it."
So I sat down, and I rebuilt all the world
building from scratch, trying to improve it,
trying to work with it, and I kept running
into this problem.
You see, I would go to signings, and people
knew that Mistborn had three different magic
systems.
That's part of what made Mistborn work.
Book 1, if you haven't read them, focuses
on allomancy.
Book 2 focuses on a different magic that's
hinted at in the first book, and Book 3 focuses
on a third magic that is hinted at in the
first two books.
You start to learn about the mechanics of
each of them.
It worked very well for the structure of that
series to dig into a different magic in each
series so there was always something new to
be exploring.
I didn't explain it all in the first book
and left some sense of wonder for the future
books.
So people started to ask me, they learned
about the Way of Kings.
They learned that I had written this book
and hadn't released it, and they found an
Amazon listing for it, somehow.
I still don't know how this happened, by the
way, because I never signed a contract for
The Way of Kings.
I signed a contract for Elantris and Mistborn.
But initially, Moshe had offered on Elantris
and The Way of Kings.
So somehow, someone in TOR told Amazon this
author was releasing these two books before
a contract was signed, and they put up a listing
for both of them, and then left the one up
for The Way of Kings even after we didn't
put that in the contract, and fans found it,
and then they became fans of my-- well, first
they became fans.
They fanned this and were like, "We're going
to pretend we have this book."
So they started taking fan pictures of themselves
with the book with a fake cover that had Elvis
on it, and a quote from Terry Goodkind that
said, "A hunk o’, hunk o’ burning good
book."
They started to put fake quotes on the back
of it.
Amazon just let you upload your own photos
and information.
They were doing a Wikipedia thing back then.
So there's all these wonderful quotes from
made-up people talking about loving the book,
and there's a bunch of fake reviews of people
loving the book and talking about the killer
penguins and all this stuff.
Regardless, TOR did eventually make that page
vanish.
I'm sorry.
STUDENT: Do you have records of it?
BRANDON: I do have records of it somewhere.
I'm not sure where they are.
I know fandom has some too.
We have a copy of the book, I think, that
they printed off the fake cover and put on
for us after it was published or something.
But regardless, The Way of Kings was known
in fandom, and they started to ask questions
about it.
They knew it was going to be my big epic.
I always planned this to be the biggest and
longest of my series.
It was the one that they knew the original
first draft of was 300,000 words, which is
way longer than my other books.
The published version has 400,000 words.
But they started saying to me, "Brandon, how
many magic systems will this book have?"
I started to say, "Thirty."
Because I'm like, "I'm going to develop 30
different magic systems.
I'm going to have 10 magics based on each
of the surges, and I'm going to have 10 magics
based on void binding, and I'm going to have
a bunch of different magical mechanisms for
the Fabrials science, and I'm going to explain
these as 10 different magic systems and all
the stuff."
And I started to get caught up in the hype
of bigger is better.
This, when I went to my world building, is
what I realized had ruined the first incarnation
of The Way of Kings, the thinking that bigger
is better, because it's not.
Now, there are some cases where bigger is
better.
It's not strictly true.
It's not strictly untrue.
If you love a book already, you get into it,
oftentimes you're like, "Wow, I'm glad there's
so much more of this book to love."
And if the storyline you're trying to tell
is improved by having a large arc in the same
story like The Way of Kings, then big is better
for that book in that instance.
But big is not strictly better.
In fact, with world building, I think it is
usually worse.
So Sanderson's Third Law is where I realized
that "Before adding something new 
to your magic, and I'll put your setting in
general, see if you can instead expand what
you have."
There is a game series called The Elder Scrolls,
which I love.
A lot of people leave reviews on some installments
of this, because The Elder Scrolls has always
been about using a vast setting as a way to
engage you.
In fact, the first one I played was called
Daggerfall, and the reason it hooked me, people
said, "You've got to play this.
There are, like, 10,000 different dungeons
and they are all unique."
They used procedurally generated dungeons
to create Daggerfall.
I played it, and then I realized that those
10,000 dungeons were the same 10 assets recombined
in enough ways to make 10,000 whatever.
Not 10 assets, but, you know, a number of
assets.
In fact, people started reviewing the game,
saying, "They are an ocean that is an inch
deep."
This was one of the big criticisms for the
series.
In fact, one they kind of tried to fix in
the most recent one, Skyrim by saying, "We're
going to back away from the procedural generation,
and make some of these dungeons have a lot
of attention to detail, particularly the ones
that you're most likely to play through, so
that they're interesting and engaging."
And indeed, having 10 dungeons in a game that
are really well made, turns out, for most
player experiences, is way better than 10,000
dungeons that are basically all boring.
This is what you run into with our magic systems
and your settings if you start to say, "Wow,
Sanderson is doing a 10-book epic with all
of this stuff in it.
In order to write an epic fantasy, therefore,
I need to have my languages all built ahead
of time.
I need to have the lore going back 10,000
years.
I need to have built all of these different
interesting religious systems and governments
and magic systems.
And, oh, no!
I need 10 PhDs to write this book."
The danger here is that that's not necessarily
better.
Now certainly, having an expertise and applying
it to a book, or even making sure you're doing
a wide variety of different things in your
book can be very handy.
But most readers will latch onto one idea
done really well, better than they will latch
onto 100 ideas just barely touched on.
In Way of Kings, the original, instead of
taking and trying to do 10 different character
lines 10% of the way done, if I instead picked
three, Dalinar, Kaladin, and Shallan, and
I told a really good chunk of their stories,
turns out the book is way better.
Because doing a really good job with three
characters and having a bunch of side characters
who all have interesting hooks, and they'll
all get their own books eventually, but in
that first book making sure-- really, the
first book is 50% or more Kaladin and doing
his story just as best as I could do it, with
Dalinar and Shallan just being there enough
to get you interested in them, because you
knew they were going to have more extensive
arcs later.
That book worked.
You should apply this in many cases to your
world building.
If you're asking yourself, "All these things
I need to do," if you instead say, "You know
what?
I'm really interested in religion.
If I create three interesting religions that
all come off of the same branch, like Christianity,
Judaism, and Islam branched off of kind of
the same core theology long ago, it creates
an interesting relationship between these
three religions.
If they're all taking a different perspective
on it, and I dig into that perspective, and
maybe I related that to a magic in the world,"
you are going to have a better book than if
you say, "There are 50 different religions
in this book.
It's so diverse and interesting.
You're going to love it."
That book with three religions done well,
almost always going to be a better book.
This is about learning to dig deeper into
a concept and explore the different ramifications
of it, instead of just throwing everything
you can think of into a book.
This is really important for fantasy and science
fiction, because we are coming to fantasy
and science fiction because of the world building.
In general, we want to come to this world
building and be transported to a different
place.
It's very common for the author to say, I'm
going to take you to a different place.
I'm going to put all this weird stuff in,
but then not leaving the reader with something
to latch onto, that is really interesting,
that presents itself an interesting problem
or an interesting hook.
That interesting problem or hook related to
the world building is way more vital than
these other things.
Next week we'll dig into all the different
types of things you can put into a fantasy
novel, and it will feel like, "Oh, no, I need
100 PhDs to write this book."
The whole goal of that lecture, though, is
to kind of push you, to expand what you view
story or science fiction to be, and to try
to find where your niche for a given book
might be, latch onto it, and do it really
well.
If you are writing a big epic fantasy, you
probably need to be multiples of these, and
in fact, you need to learn a skill which we'll
talk about as the iceberg theory of world
building.
When I first became a writer, I heard a lot
of authors on panels talking about how world
building should be an iceberg, the classic
iceberg theory.
Here's the iceberg, here's the water, and
there is this huge body of world building
underneath the ice that the reader should
be able to tell that you did, but you're not
going to show them on the page.
Right?
Well, this is usually wrong.
This is not what writer doing most of the
time.
Pulling the drapes back and showing you the
wizard behind the screen, most of the time
what we're actually doing is we're doing that.
It is a hollow iceberg, that we've done just
enough work so that if you look down through
the water, you're like, "Yup, it goes on."
That would flip over, by the way, in real
life, so I understand that.
STUDENT: How about an iceberg with a steel
bottom?
BRANDON: Yes, with a steel bottom.
But what we're really doing is this.
Because unless your grandpa told you, and
you can take 20 years and a degree in linguistics
to create world building for 20 years, which,
by the way, there's nothing wrong with, and
if that's what you want to do, great.
But remember, this class' job is to assume
you want a professional career in sci-fi/fantasy
where you're releasing books consistently,
because that's what you'll need to do in the
market today, is have a book every few years.
You don't have time to do that iceberg that
people are talking about.
So what you do instead is, you learn to fake
it.
Writing books is like being a stage magician.
If you want to surprise people with twist
endings, it's all about making them pay attention
to this hand while you're slowly giving them
the information they need so you can punch
them in the face later.
If you are doing world building, you are doing
only what you absolutely need for your story,
and you are hinting that the rest is there
in a way that lets the reader say, "Oh, they've
done all that.
They have it all in their head.
I can trust them, and I can just let myself
enjoy this world."
Oftentimes, that's by doing things like saying,
mentioning there's this other thing that these
people know about that the main characters
don't, and okay.
Or it's done, we'll talk when we talk about
prose, it's done by getting small details
right so that the reader is allowed to just
assume you got everything else right.
Or it's about doing one thing really well
that the reader knows you've done well, so
that they trust you that all the rest of it
is there when you tell them, "By the way,
it's all totally there.
We have 10,000 worlds of history built for
this, but you don't need to learn it, because
it would bore you right now."
And the reader's like, "Yeah, it would.
Thanks.
I'm glad you did all that work."
When really you did none of it.
Next week we'll talk about how to do that.
But let's end with Sanderson's Zeroeth Law.
Sanderson's Zero Law is very quick.
Sanderson's Zeroeth Law came when I was doing
all of this, and I started to ask myself,
"How often is this where a story starts for
me?"
The answer is, not very often.
Now, the Sanderson's Three Laws generally
have a lot to do with my building of an outline,
and they have a lot to do with how I do my
revisions and write my story.
But Sanderson's Zeroeth Law is where stories
begin.
Sanderson's Zeroeth Law is, "Always err on
the side of what is awesome."
This is because I wanted to be very clear
with myself that most of my ideas-- my idea
for Way of Kings, where did it start?
It didn't start with all this cool stuff.
It started because I wanted to tell a story
about knights with magical power armor.
That is the origin, well one of them, there's
a lot of different threads that became The
Way of Kings, but one of the main origins
was, wow, power armor is cool.
I want fantasy power armor.
How can I make that work?
Well, big, enormous, cool magic swords are
cool, but they don't make any sense really
narratively in most settings.
How can I make a setting where giant magic
swords would be the thing you'd actually want
to have?
That is where I start, is with the cool idea,
and then I work backward.
So I'll just leave that with you.
Remember that making a great story is the
goal, and if these rules help you do that,
great.
I'm glad I shared them with you.
If they don't, throw them away.
We'll see you guys next week.
CLASS: (applause)
