Poll of the Day > Brandon Sanderson's Kickstarter made $15M in its first fucking day lmao

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dragonsteel/surprise-four-secret-novels-by-brandon-sanderson/description

Hot damn good for him. I can't imagine writing 4 novels in two years. I can barely finish this topic without getting distracted by som

I've only read Mistborn so far, I like his style but I felt like he got too technical with his magic system at times, does that improve?

I don't know this author but he must be very popular if he's able to raise this much so quickly. The campaign looks great for fans.

Muscles posted...

I felt like he got too technical with his magic system at times,

That sounds like a video game adaptation waiting to happen.

Far-Queue posted...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dragonsteel/surprise-four-secret-novels-by-brandon-sanderson/description

Hot damn good for him. I can't imagine writing 4 novels in two years. I can barely finish this topic without getting distracted by som

I mean, it's less that he wrote 4 secret novels, but that he wrote 4 secret novels ON TOP OF everything else he wrote... but in the last 2 years he'd been writing a lot of co-op work, so... there's that.

But, you know, on the other side of things, keep in mind self-published authors often write 10 novels per year, with some absolutely insane authors coming out with over 20 per year. (Although their books tend to be 50-80k words, while Sanderson is more 180-300k.)

After getting paid I would do like the Steve Miller Band and Take The Money And Run.

Far-Queue posted...

I can't imagine writing 4 novels in two years.

Stephen King used to crap out like 3-4 books a year back in the day. The secret is cocaine. Lots and lots of cocaine.

And I think at one point, Dean Koontz came out with something like 9 books in a single year. Though in his case, the secret is formulaic writing and mediocre plots. It's easier to churn out dreck.



Muscles posted...

I've only read Mistborn so far, I like his style but I felt like he got too technical with his magic system at times, does that improve?

That was always my problem with him. He seems kind of obsessed with treating magic like a science - with detailed mechanical systems and complicated rules - to the detriment of actual storytelling. In the same way that Tolkien was self-admittedly only writing stories because it gave him an excuse to show off his made-up languages, Sanderson feels like he's just writing a dissertation about this complex magical system he came up with, and then occasionally remembering to throw characters and story in every now and then.

Part of why I think his best work was when he was finishing off someone else's story. Writing the last few Wheel of Time books after Robert Jordan died, he got to focus more on actual storytelling. He was less focused on trying to describe or explain the magical system or show off a unique setting (which had already been established by that point), so his weaknesses were offset and his strengths were more able to shine through. And ironically, he was able to avoid Robert Jordan's weaknesses (rambling filler writing stretching what was originally supposed to be a trilogy into 14 books), so the end result wound up being more than the sum of its two writers.

Sanderson's kind of like the type of DM that just spends 20+ hours a week working on worldbuilding for his D&D campaign, then shits out an adventure for the players in about 20 minutes.

HornedLion posted...

After getting paid I would do like the Steve Miller Band and Take The Money And Run.

But then I would do like the Steve Miller Band and reach out and grab ya.

https://youtu.be/tY8B0uQpwZs?t=50

Ah. I've only read The Rithmatist. It was okay. I thought it was at its weakest when it was clearly trying to simultaneously channel but subvert expectations of people familiar with the Harry Potter series. Was a shame because it distracted from the stuff in the book that was interesting.
.
I haven't tried his other books, but unless they are better, I don't think I'll bother picking them up, tbh.

that video where he just pulled out novel after novel

i thought it was just gonna be him finally admitting he used ghostwriters, but fuckin no

Jen0125 posted...

I don't know this author but he must be very popular if he's able to raise this much so quickly. The campaign looks great for fans.

He's a fantasy author and was chosen to finish the Wheel of Time series after Robert Jordan died. Haven't read any of his original works, but have heard good things repeatedly.

mistborn series is real good but does go heavy into philosophical debating

i like to recommend his legion short stories for first time readers, because it's a good place to test the waters since it's got a little bit of everything

I've read a bunch of his stuff and enjoyed all of it, particularly stormlight archive.

Adam_Savage posted...

that video where he just pulled out novel after novel

i thought it was just gonna be him finally admitting he used ghostwriters, but fuckin no

He was doing his joking voice so obviously nothing was going to come of it.

And, tbh, when I was looking over his output for the past 2 years I was thinking it was lower than usual.

Holy shit

This project is up to $21M in three days

ParanoidObsessive posted...

and then occasionally remembering to throw characters and story in every now and then.

Well, no, his stories tend to be character heavy. The actual plots are often fine, but I love Mistborn, Warbreaker, and the first two Stormlight for the characters. Mind you, he still does go hard and heavy on the magic-as-science thing, which gets annoying in Stormlight or even the later Mistborn books when they bring up "Investiture." However, no, he does not just tack on the characters after the fact.

If anything, it feels like the eastern style of storytelling that focuses on the world or character more than it does the sequence of events.

Entity13 posted...

Well, no, his stories tend to be character heavy. The actual plots are often fine, but I love Mistborn, Warbreaker, and the first two Stormlight for the characters. Mind you, he still does go hard and heavy on the magic-as-science thing, which gets annoying in Stormlight or even the later Mistborn books when they bring up "Investiture." However, no, he does not just tack on the characters after the fact.

I was exaggerating for humorous effect. It is a thing I do.

But yes, he absolutely tends to focus on mechanics over plot. You can see it pretty clearly when you try to read a plot synopsis of a story (or the cover blurb on the back of the book), and about 70% of it is trying to explain Shardplate and Shardblades and Desolations and the Knights Radiant and Soulcasting and - at which point my eyes have completely glazed over and the book goes right back on the shelf forever.

It's one of the Three Cardinal Sins for fantasy/sci-fi writing for me. When I see it in cover blurbs on books I avoid them like the plague. The same goes for when like half the words in the blurb are Proper Nouns (which is the tell-tale sign of an insane obsessive worldbuilder), or when half the character names have pointless apostrophes and umlauts and the like (which suggests you're dealing with a hack writer who's aping Tolkien without understanding him - in which case you can probably also skim through the book and notice multiple examples of italicized songs/poetry, because Tolkien clones love that shit).

A good storyteller tells stories. Which tend to be fairly universal, and which can usually be explained or described without having to pull out 72 pages worth of jargon or complicated explanations. Ring bad, volcano, save the world. Got it.