YouSaid · the spoken record

Brandon Sanderson

lines on the record: 270
first: 2025-02-05
most recent: 2025-02-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I have a deep and abiding love of the heist genre. You know, Sneakers is one of my favorite films of all time. Oldie but Goody, The Sting, all the way up to kind of, you know, the Oceans 11s and the Italian job, both the old one and the new one, just the inception. You do a good heist, you can get me. And as a writer, some of your light bulb moments are when you're like, hey, I love this thing and I've never written about it. And that's gold when you, you know, you feel like you've covered everything and then you realize there's some area of passion and love that you haven't tapped at all. I'm like, I need to do a fantasy heist. What if I did a heist where every member of this heist crew had a magical talent and they all combined together? I'm like, nobody's done this. It was really kind of a big deal to me when I realized no one had done this. Because as a writer, you're always looking for the things that no one has done. The truth is everyone's done everything. But when you find something, you're like,”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Wheel of Time, there's this dark lord, and what happens is some furry-footed British kid throws their ring in a hole and their entire Empire collapses. Or, you know, there's a kid you're going to kill and the power of a mother's love protects him. How can you plan for the power of a mother's love when you're a dark lord? That's just a complete oddball. And I think they never get a break. What if the dark lord won? What if Frodo got to the end of Lord of the Rings with the ring? And Sauron was there. He's like, my ring, you know how long I've been looking for that? Thank you so much for that must have been a hard journey bringing that all the way here. Thank you. And then killed him and took over the world, right? That's like, what if? And I thought, that's a downer of a book. I don't know that I want to write a book about the traditional hero's journey that ends with the Dark Lord winning, but it went in the back of the head, right? And then...”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of this starting, yeah. So I'll build it from one of my books, Missed One, right? So Mistborn had a series of ideas. The first idea came. I was reading Harry Potter back in the Harry Potter boom. And I thought, man, these dark lords never get a break.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But then I rewrite the plot once I know the character. Here's my process. So I start usually with a couple of really good ideas. I usually want to have multiple interesting ideas for my setting, at least one hook for each character.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I pull a bunch of ideas, I brainstorm a bunch of random ideas, and then I say, I've got to use all of these, go. And I write a story without an outline. That's to practice the tool. And I generally fall these days on a 75% outline sort of thing. I do a lot of work building on my plot and I do a lot of building on my setting. And then I write my way into characters. One of the big dangers of outlining too much is characters that feel wooden or cardboard because they are there merely to get you between point A and point B. And then from point B to point C on your outline. And if you have characters that your early readers are like, these feel a little wooden, it might be because instead of going according to the characters motivations, you're just going according to the outline. And I find that if I let myself write my way into character and then rebuild my outline.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So I've tried all the tools. I have a middle grade series called Alcatraz vs. The Evil Librarians, which are Pure Garden. I actually use a method a little like, do you know the old show Whose Line Is It Anyway? Sure.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so save the cat is kind of a really good leaping off point. And if you want the opposite of Save the Cat on writing by Stephen King is a leaping off point in Save the Cat's about structure and on writing's about the life of a writer and not structure. And those will give you kind of two of the kind of different viewpoints on storytelling, and they're both very good. My agent always recommends Writing to Sell by Scott Meredith. I find it a little too structure focused. There is art to writing. And the dirty secret of Outlining is you're still going to have to learn to garden. Because, yeah, you'll have these points on the outline. But then when you sit down to write them, you're a gardener getting between these two points in the outline. And so both skills are really important. But Scott Meredith, I did read that and like it quite a bit.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, that's not the original Save the Cat. No, that's not the new one. So I do recommend Save the Cat, but Save the Cat go to the movies. I haven't read that. That sounds good.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And if you do it right, people are wanting that twist before they realize it happens and then it does. And that is day one. Then day two is I'm like, all right, here are some structures that people have used. Here's your toolbox. Some people use the heroes journey. Here's what the hero's journey is in brief. Here is what it's good for. Here are some things to watch out for because the hero's journey can steer you wrong sometimes. Here's three-act format. Here's what it's good at. Here's some maybe some foibles of three-act format. Here's Robert Jordan's method, which he called points on the map. Here's how a lot of screwball comedies are written. It's called Yes But No And. All of these different tools I try to talk about and say, and there's a ton more, there's nine-point story structure. There's seven-point story structure, whatever. But the idea is here's some things to try, but keep in mind, promise, progress, payoff. And I feel like that gives sort of an overview of how to build narrative.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Promise, progress, payoff. That is what makes people love stories and read through on a kind of macro scale, getting through an individual chapter is something different. But on a macro scale, that is plot. And that is, you know, I talk about on the first day, this idea of how to do that, how to have twists that are actually fulfilling promises. And that one's fun. The best twists don't just surprise the reader. A complication should surprise the reader, but a twist should be surprising yet inevitable”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He works alone, but he has, you know, there's a problem. There's something that's hurting. And here's this other cop. He's going to retire soon. But, you know, he's missing something in his life. And then you slowly, that's your promise. Your progress is showing them work well together. And then your payoff is the moment at the end where all.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Again, stole that one from Dave. And so the idea for a character plot is you are braiding the roses. And over time, you're seeing that those points. Number one, you see how dangerous they are poking into each other. But then you see how pointed outward these people actually work better. And kind of the holes, the places where one doesn't have a thorn and can get hit, another one's thorn protects and things like that. And over the course of the story, you see that rose get braided to the point that you are saying you guys are so much better together than apart. You need to be together. And then when they either hook up or become partners, again, same story structure, then you stand up and you cheer. So the idea is it is promise. You promise at the start. In a romance novel, you show two people apart. You show what their thorns are. You promise just by featuring them that they're going to get together. Buddy cop movie. Here's this cop. He's a loner.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Against the world. If you take two roses and you don't braid them, you stick them together, they poke each other. But if you braid them really well, then all the thorns point outward. And these two roses suddenly become stronger together than they were apart.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Information generally and ends with them gaining the information. And so the story, the progress is all about these little bits of information that you get through the story. And at its fundamental, this does some fun things. For instance, buddy cop movies and romances have the same sort of fundamental structure, which is it's about a relationship between two people where slowly you are finding out that they work better together than apart. And so your progress is seeing how they rub each other wrong, but then how Dave, my own teacher, talked about braiding roses. How if the thorns are pointed outward for these characters rather than pointed inward, they become a defensive bulwark for one another.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You can watch the, we're doing new ones this year. So you can go watch these two lectures that I'm talking about. The first one, I just talk about the theory of plot. What makes someone turn a page? Why does someone start at page one and then end, what is a page turner? And my theory on this is it is a sense of progress. We like to see things count up as human beings. And the great plots are doing this beneath the hood. They are showing incremental slow progress forward, sometimes backwards, sometimes a little of each, toward a goal. And the idea for plot is to identify what type of plot it is. If you're doing a mystery, then that progress is going to be in the form of information. The story starts without the characters without the information, the reader without the information.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What are we talking about? So I do two lectures on narrative. And generally the first day I do not talk about Hero's journey or three-act structure or any of these things. That's for the second week because I do my class as one giant lecture each week followed by these albums.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's how I love Japan. I've only been once, but it was just delightful. Just walking around Tokyo is such a surreal and interesting experience.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wouldn't have picked French as my favorite subject, but it was my favorite class. And so I had three years of that. And she said, hey, I'm taking a study abroad to Paris. You're going to have to miss half a semester. You'll have to do makeup work, but we'll live in Paris and go visit all the sites and go to all the museums. And I'm like, I am in. You're so passionate about your trips to Paris. And it was so wonderful. Like stayed with a host family and then did day trips to just places around Paris, went to Givarny and Versailles and saw everything and museums every day and bad grades in math.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I took four years of French, and my teacher in French was the best teacher I had, Ms. Dress. And when you have good teachers, it changes your passion for a class, right?”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because otherwise, I won't figure out how to do this. And having a purpose, having a reason to do well changed my entire outlook. And I was not valid Victorian. I was one great off of it because I took a semester and moved to France that tanked my grades. It wasn't a full semester, about half a semester. But I never caught up on all the stuff that I needed to do. So I got a B plus in one class. But it was totally worth it. Go live in France.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why that changed? Because I discovered stories about wizards. I discovered there was something I wanted to do, right? There was now a reason to get good grades. I was in Nebraska and UNL is good for some things. I later learned that it actually has a decent writing program, but I wanted a good education and I wanted to go to BYU where my parents had gone. And I realized I probably wouldn't get into BYU because it's a private school. You do have to have, you know, better grades than C's generally to make it into some of these schools. And so suddenly I had a reason. Like, well, I want to go to a better school. Again, I was dumb. UNL is actually a really good school. But as a kid, I'm like, I need to get into this school. And so my grades went up. Like I need to be a writer. I need a degree. I need to learn about this. Therefore, I'm going to have to go to college. Therefore, I'm going to have to learn to learn.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I went and got the next book in line just alphabetical because it started with Dragon. And I read everything that had dragons in it in the school library.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And on one hand, it's kind of a silly book about wizards and dragons, right? And I get done with this book and I understand my mom better. And this book built empathy in me for someone that I'm a 14 year old boy. I'm understanding a middle-aged woman in ways I'd never been able to before. And I'd had fun while doing it. And there was a magic to that. And I don't use that word lightly as a storyteller, as a writer of fantasy. There was a magic to that author being able to convey a life experience of someone that just entered my brain and has never left. And I said, just like if you went and saw a magic trick, you're an analytical type person. You probably want to say, how did they do it? How did they vanish that thing? What type of mirrors did they use? I read this and said, I need to know how this is done. I have to know. And I just started reading voraciously. I went to the card catalog because I'm old. I'm even older than you.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She graduated first in her class in accounting in a year where she was the only woman in most of her accounting classes. She had been offered a really prestigious scholarship to go get her CPA. And she had decided not to. She decided that she wanted to be home with young kids when she had young kids, which I do not think is a decision anyone should make for you, but it's a decision she made for herself. She later After having kids went on and had a really great career as an accountant, but she gave up some really important things that as I'm reading this book, I'd always heard these stories. You know, she would tell them she wants us to know that she, and I always thought, of course you did, mom. Look at me. I'm great. This is what you should have done. I'm reading this book and I'm like, ditch the kids. Go be a wizard. Wizard.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She has been told by her teacher she could be the greatest wizard ever. She's got raw natural talent, but she has divided her time between studying and having a family. And her teacher's like, you really should give up that family stuff. Just really focus on your magic. But this is her crisis. This is what, and through going down, she kind of learns about the dragon magic and she starts to get really into that. And not to give spoilers, but there's an opportunity for her to just go and become what she'd always dreamed. And her crisis is, do I go do this right now or do I not? And I'm reading this book and it's really cool. It's inventive. And I realize at some point my mother.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This book absolutely should not have. What do you want to give a reluctant reader? You usually want to give him a book about someone their age, usually very similar to them. A reluctant reader, if it's a young man, you hand him Harry Potter, right? This is a book about a middle-aged woman going through a midlife crisis. The story is that there's a dragon who's come to, you know, destroy the kingdom. The last living person who's killed a dragon is this guy and they go hunting him. And he lives up in the north because he's now middle-aged with a family. And he's like, I killed a dragon when I was in my 20s. I don't do that anymore. I'm an old dude now. And they're like, you're the only one who's ever done it. And so he goes to his wife and he's like, I guess I got to go kill this dragon. We got to figure out how to do this. And it's told from her perspective as they go down and try to figure out how to kill a dragon as middle-aged people and be smart about it rather than charging it with a sword. And her story is...”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cool dragon on the cover. It was all misty and kind of awesome looking. It had a cute girl on the cover. It's like, hey, I'm 14. Maybe this will work. And I take this book. Now, this book should not have worked.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I leaped through and I arrived on this book called Dragon Spain by Barbara Hamley. And it really was the cover, cover Illustrator's Michael Whalen. I would eventually, he's the illustrator who did the Way of Kings in the Stormlight Archive for me. I eventually got him. He just retired. He did the last cover was the fifth book of the Stormlight Archive, and he's retired. But he's done that before, so he might be back. He pulls Amia Zaki sometimes and pops in and out, or a Michael Jordan, depending on the field you're talking about. But regardless, I picked up this book and it had...”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I probably shouldn't admit this, but I cheated on a book report with her. If you're a smart kid, you realize that the back of the book, even before the internet, basically tells you the entire plot, and then you can read the last chapter, and you'll know the whole plot of the book. So it's like book report, write a summary and why you liked it. And I read the back of the book, the last chapter, and turned it in. And I made some mistakes. And she picked me out. She sat me down. And she was actually very good. She's like, something's not clicking with you with books. And I'm like, no, they really aren't. She's like, so for your next book report, I just want you to read one of these books on my rack here. These are my favorite books that I have for kids to read. I just want you to actually read it and you can talk to me about it. And like, I just, I don't like books. She's like, well, just try something different. So I went to the rack and I always joke. It's like, you can tell the paperbacks that have been read by 100 students, right? They got spaghetti stains on them and things like that.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where I'm like, I don't even have a dog, but I'm tired of the dog dying. I know what it's like to be a kid. Like I don't live on a farm, but my grandparents were all farmers, right? And I live behind a farm. I was in Lincoln. It's mostly urban, but mostly urban in that Midwest way where you're in the capital city and a brand new kind of high cost development, but there's a cornfield in your backyard. That's just Nebraska, right? That's just how we roll. And so I knew all that. I was not interested in it. And so I fell out of reading. Eighth grade rolls around. I have a teacher, Ms. Reader. She doesn't remember me. Ms. Reader. Ms. Reader. How appropriate. Yep. Yeah. Ms. Reader. She wanted to be a professor at UC Irvine. So if anyone had a professor reader at UC Irvine, this was the same person. But Ms. Reader, she was my eighth grade English teacher.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, this is a fun story. I was not a writer or a reader when I was young, which is I found pretty odd for people who are published novelists. A lot of my friends I'll talk to them be like, yeah, I published my first thing when I was two. I came out of the womb with a poem ready to go in my student newspaper and things like that. Me, I did read when I was very young. And about fourth or fifth grade, I fell out of it. And this is the era where I lived in Nebraska. And there were certain books that people just really like to read in Nebraska. And they usually involved young people on farms. Sometimes living in the wilderness on their own, sometimes on a ranch, they had pet dogs, and the pet dogs died. And I got like three of those in a row.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Those are new words. Now, when I'm doing revisions, I'm not writing new words. And I would say around a third of my time is spent on revisions depending on the year. And this is the thing. Some years I'll do a lot of words. Some years I do a lot more revisions. It really depends. But if we're looking at 2000 words a week times 50 weeks, like that can produce quite a lot of words. So 10,000 words a week is what that would turn into. That's 500,000 words a year, right? Is what I could theoretically produce now. Third of my time is done to revision. So really, I'm looking at around 300,000 words. A Stormlight Archive book is 18 months of work for that reason and things like that.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, my goal is 2000 to 2,500 words a day. So, you know, whatever 10 pages to 20 pages is what I'm looking at depends. I mean, I write in the old school manuscript format where everything's 12 point and in courier. And it's a holdover from the days when certain typesetting things are done that are too nerdy perhaps to talk about here. But I think in Words, so I do 2,200.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, 350. Like the way a kings is 400,000 words. And we kind of cram stuff in there and we get to 1,000 pages on that. So you can kind of run that. It's a fourth of a thousand pages. So it'll be 250. But here's the thing. We use dirty tricks in publishing. If you're reading a thriller or a young adult book, what they'll do is they'll put a lot fewer words on a page because they want to increase the pacing. They want to make it feel like you're just zipping through. It's a page turner, right? So they're going to want, you know, 50% fewer words on every page. So that kid picking up that book that's a reluctant reader is like, wow, this one's really fast. I don't have space for that in my big fantasies. I push the limits of what can be bound. And beyond that, we're not expecting you to read this book in one sitting. So we can put more on a page and it makes it feel dense and thick and meaty, which can be really enjoyable if you want to dig.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And building a novel out of good habits. And I focus on that. I'm like, break it down, set a goal, have a spreadsheet, and try to hit your word counts, or at least your hour counts. If you're having trouble doing this, go to a specific place every day that you do this, that you don't do a lot of other things. Go to the coffee shop, go to a certain room in the house, turn on certain music that you only turn on when you're writing. Build that habit so that you are very consistent. Batch your writing time. If there's something you already do every day, if you go, if you already have built a habit to go to the gym, then try to align your life so that you go to the gym and then have an hour to write. Think about where you're going to write at the gym, sit and write for an hour so that you are adding onto a habit that you've already built. And that's my focus in the class is really be consistent. See if you can write. The goal is in the class to write $35,000. Class is around a thousand.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Months walk in without a book, come out with a book, and then they don't write for 10 months, right? Most people are better served by writing a certain amount every day, really consistently, or at least two or three times a week.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where you sit and listen to people on campus and you just write down exactly what they say, exactly as it said, and then take it and try to write it under different styles of dialogue. If you're writing like Soderberg, how would you do it? Pick some of your favorite people. Go watch their movies, write down the dialogue and compare that to the real life and just kind of like figure out what kind of dialogue you like to do. Those are exercises. But in general, I'm only doing that when I'm diagnosing a problem. For the class, I'm saying your job, if you want to, try to be a professional writer, you're going to have to write consistently. Nine out of 10 writers that I've found are that do better with consistency. One out of ten is a binge writer. I don't understand binge writers as well, but I can talk about that. Those are the people who go, rent a cabin, take”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What I generally do is I follow a focus on habits approach. Instead of giving them specific writing exercises, I can give them, if someone comes up to me and says, I'm having trouble with X, I'll give them a writing exercise to work with that. If someone comes up to me and says, I am having a lot of trouble going back and revising my chapters over and over again instead of writing the next one, I'll say, okay, try writing longhand. This works for some people. You go, you take a page of paper, you write it longhand, and you tell yourself it doesn't have to be perfect until I put it into the computer. And you start each day taking what you wrote before and putting it into the computer, and then leave it alone and write your next chapter longhand, and then use that process to kind of get yourself back into the writing, but then forcing yourself to do something new that works for some people. If people are having trouble with dialogue, I say, all right, go do the exercise.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you try to take both of their advice equally weighted, then you're going to get nowhere. You can try both methods in different ways. You can try some hybrids. But a lot of things you'll learn in writing,”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Stephen King exploring and discovering his story is the thing that makes him excited. He wants to take a seed. He'll often say, I take two really interesting characters and I put them in conflict and have something go wrong and I see where the story goes. And I just write. And he says if he has an outline, he feels like he's already done that process in the outline. So when he sits down to write the book, he has no motivation. He's not exploring and discovering anymore. The other group we call architects. Architects like to build a structure and then kind of go and take this little piece and then polish that little piece and see where it goes and then take the next piece that they've already built as part of their structure and build a story around that. And most people are somewhere in between these two extremes, but those were two extremes where I realized I can't do both of these. I can't both not have an outline and have an outline. I can have a hybrid approach, but...”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The one I generally use as my prime example is when I was studying this before I broke in, two authors that I admired, I read their books. I read on writing by Stephen King and how to write sci-fi and fantasy by Orson Scott. And I read these books, and I honestly can't tell you 100% if it was in those exact books or other writings of theirs on their websites and things. But Stephen King at one point said, do not make an outline. Do not use a writing group. These will destroy your writing. And Scott Cart is like, I need an outline. It is fundamentally vital for me in order to build my book. Now, Stephen King is what we generally call, these are George R. Martin's terms. He's wonderful the way he speaks about fiction. If you're really interested, anything George says is golden. He calls them gardeners. Stephen King is a gardener.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I want to approach it as a toolbox giving people all of these various tools, some of which are contradictory, self-contradictory. I can give you examples of that if you want, but you can't use them all. So you're going to have to ignore some of the advice of major authors, some of the things that Stephen King tells you will be wrong, some of the things for you, some of the things that I tell you will be wrong for you. You have to find your own way. And so I kind of start off with I'm going to pretend you want to be a professional writer and then follow it up with, but learn when to ignore me.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But if you write a book, people will say, So when are you going to publish it? And I say to the students, it's okay if that's not your goal. If you want to write just for you, if you want to be on the I Spend 20 years and then produce one book route, totally fine. However, I want you to know everything you would need to shoot for the highest level, which is earning a full-time living as a writer, and everything else falls underneath that. So during the class, we pretend that that's your goal. Once you walk out of it, you can make your own goals, whatever they are. But while we're there, we pretend that. And then the second thing I say is you're going to have to learn when to ignore me. And that is really hard to do because I'm an authority. I'm up there. Survivorship bias says, who knows what I actually say is going to be relevant. Some of it hopefully, but I can't really determine what really played a part in me being successful.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Learning to write a narrative and get those thoughts out of your head and page just innately good. Most people, when they go play basketball, pretty if they look like me, people aren't going to be like, so when you're going into the NBA.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First class. So first class is some things I just told you I get up and I say to them, actually the very first thing is I say to them, during this class, we're going to pretend you want to be a professional writing writer, earning a full-time living from your writing in the next 10 years. That we're going to pretend because most of you, that's probably not why they're there, right? Most of them, they're just curious. They may have a book in them. And we have this curious relationship with art in our society. It is as soon as you say I'm going to write something, people like, oh, when will you monetize it? When will you earn money from it? And that can be kind of destructive, right? Like you mentioned, you're writing a book just or you wrote one just because it was niche. You enjoyed it. I think writing is legitimately just good for people in the same way that working out is good for people.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Quickly enough that what works for one generation by the time they've broken in, the industry has changed, it just doesn't work.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, we hit it off. You mentioned that I could send you my work. Here it is. And that's what got me an agent in an editor, was doing that, just kind of the Dave Farlan method of breaking in. I was the last generation that worked for. It really doesn't work anymore. Everyone jokes that in publishing, no one actually wants to publish in the authors. No one wants to actually do any work. So anytime someone sneaks in, they're like, oh, how did you get into publishing? Oh, really? And then they close that door so that no one else can get in, that we all joke about things like that. It's not actually true. Everyone actually wants to find great authors and great work, but the industry changes.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Advice back in the early 2000s, publishing in sci-fi fantasy was still very networking focused. It's actually moved away from that for various reasons. But back then, the best way to break in was to go to the conventions, get into the parties, meet the editors, and start chatting with them and start listening to what they were actually interested in. The magic question was, what are you working on right now that you're really excited by? Because this lets you learn the personalities of the various editors. It's not networking in that none of them knew who I was, but it's networking in that hearing from them directly what they were buying and why, then you could go to these, you know, 50 editors and say, all right, these five really seem like they would like my work instead of sending to all 50, I target those five. I met them at a party. I say, hey, I met you sound like...”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At college to learn not to check some boxes off of a list. And so I took his class and it was revolutionary to me. He sat down like the first few days. He's like, all right, here's how you actually construct a narrative. Here's what works. Here's what doesn't work. Here are tools. He really focused and it became my focus in teaching on here's a toolbox because not every tool works for every writer. In fact, you're generally going to gravitate toward one or two and the rest you'll find useless. And he took that toolbox approach and he said, some writers do it this way, some writers do it that way. Try this. Here's something to do. And then he talked about publishing in this way that was mind-blowing because that was the big thing for me was hearing someone say the black box. Yeah. Here's my publishing contract. He said he passed it around. Here's my latest contract. Have a look at it. Ask questions. And here's how you go about getting one of these. And I took it.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Most of them have retired by now or passed on, but they knew nothing about publishing. This is just very common in the arts, right? They'll talk about how to express yourself as a writer, but they won't talk about how do you construct a sympathetic character. Never heard those terms. They'll tell you about, you know, how to get into a MFA program, but they won't tell you how to get it publishing deal because none of them have done it. And so again, they did teach me some valuable things, but my senior year, after going through a bunch of these workshops is what we call it, writing workshops, I heard that there was a writer coming in who actually had published something. And he was teaching the low-level 200 level class. By then, I was in taking the graduate courses, even though I wasn't a graduate yet. And I'm like, I should probably take this class, even though it's kind of a step backward. It won't fulfill any of my credit requirements.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT