Tagged: Writing

Sanderson vs Audible

Back in 2022, massively prolific fantasy author Brandon Sanderson went out on a limb to stand by independent authors regarding some of Audible’s rather unfair practices. To gain some clout in this, he refused to release his Secret Projects books to Audible, instead selling them on small audiobook platforms. Well,...

Sanderson’s Record Breaking Kickstarter

Brandon Sanderson’s Kickstarter is certainly one for the record books. Not only was it the biggest Kickstarter of all time, but it blew away the next highest one by light-years. Bringing in a whopping $41.7 million dollars, the numbers are absolutely shocking — especially since he expected a “mere” $1...

How Does Print-On-Demand Work?

Have you ever wondered how print-on-demand works? No? Well, be that as it may, I’ve found a pretty nice video showing how Amazon fulfilment prints books on demand. They call it “make-on-demand,” but whatever. The most surprising thing for me was how many manual steps are actually involved. Truth be...

“He Said, She Said,” I Screamed

Some of the worst writing advice I keep hearing is along the lines of “Don’t use any dialogue tags other than ‘said’.” I believe this originates from “Elmore Leonard Rules of Good (aka bland) Writing”. I fully intend to write an article addressing Elmore Leonard’s terrible rules, but the one...

Write What You Know? No!

One of the most common pieces of writing advice you are likely to hear is “write what you know.” In fact, “write what you know” and “show don’t tell” are parroted by English teachers so often as to reduce the advice to mere hackney adages with about as much weight...

The Stormlight Archive – World of Roshar

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Brandon Sanderson, and I especially love the books of the Cosmere “super-epic” which includes the epic series of Mistborn and the Stormlight Archive (among others). The world-building, characters, and magic systems of these series are nothing less than astounding. But sometimes it’s...

Sanderson on YouTube

Brandon Sanderson (author of Mistborn, Stormlight Archives, and the guy who finished writing The Wheel of Time) is one of my favorite authors. He has his own YouTube channel, and his videos are certainly worth watching if you are a Sanderson fan, a fan of fantasy in general, or an...

Painting a Picture with Words

If you’ve ever taken any creative writing courses, then you’ve heard it countless times before: “show, don’t tell.” In fact, you are probably sick of hearing it. But for a beginning writer, this simple bit of common writing advice is actually quite unhelpful. What does it actually mean when we...

Brandon Sanderson on Writing and Rejection

Brandon Sanderson, who is widely considered the current reigning champion of modern fantasy epics, may seem to be the last person to have suffered endless streams of rejection letters from agents and publishers. In fact, before he was published, Brandon Sanderson wrote 13 novels, all rejected by everyone he sent...

Lurn too Spel Rite

If you’re anything like me, you’re terrible at spelling, grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. Incidentally, those are four key elements of writing that all aspiring authors should master. In fact, as far as obstacles to writing go, this is perhaps the next biggest obstacle next to plotting and story development....