My next fantasy novel, Kingdom of Dragons, launches on Kickstarter on November 2nd! Check it out here: bit.ly/kingdom-of-dragons

The BYU Lectures are what sold me on Brandon as a storyteller. But, what I find incredibly encouraging is that he really sells you on the idea that writing is not an in-born talent, but it is a skill that you can learn, practice, and master. The course does focus a little on how to get published, but the main gist of the course is helping the fledgling authors in the audience to learn to love the art of writing itself. At least that's what it did for me and pushed me to check out his work for inspiration.

The mindset part is really touching, as long as you enjoy writing, creating, satisfied in finishing a novel, you are not a failure.

It’s funny how it’s recommend to mostly use “said” and “asked” because I remember in school being told to use them as little as possible! We were always pushed to use more descriptive words in place of “said” or “asked” what a relief to hear we can use them lol

I remember watching these lectures as well. I was working in a career I wasn't passionate about, hardly getting any writing done because of life and my schedule. Now, gosh... five years later (maybe?) I've changed careers to becoming a full-time writer, editor, freelancer, and content creator with half a dozen short stories published, and finally, feel like I am making progress in that "10-year" plan. Thank you for the video! Really enjoyed hearing your thoughts!

I've still never read a single book he's written but these lectures made me fall in love with Sanderson. Soo so inspiring and encouraging and Helpful!

9:02 my favorite part is that Sanderson is clearly caring a water bottle right under a sign that says no food or drink. HAHA! But seriously, thank you for this summary. Very cool to hear from a legend like this.

"My advice is to always err on the side of awesomeness"

Flaws/limitations/handicaps is an interesting trichotomy. I want to explore the idea of three characters who all share a trait, but for one it’s a flaw, one it’s a limitation, and one it’s a handicap. For example: Consider “can’t fight.” For one character, that might be a flaw they need to fix by training. For another, it’s a handicap they overcome by learning other ways to help out in combat situations. And for a third, it’s a limitation, and they just don’t participate in combat scenes.

Oddly enough, my favourite video in the entire series is the short story video with Mary Robinnete kowal. She does such a great job of teaching the basics of storytelling. That video, plus the character's 'slidding scales' video, really helped me understand the patterns of storytelling and great characters.

i like the magic system from the webtoon "nothing special"- its a hard magic system, it has defined rules, but its such a convoluted and hard to learn system that only a few characters can understand and use it at an advanced level

Ur channel is absolutely underrated

I will forever be thankful to Brandon for finishing Wheel Of Time(my favourite Fantasy series) done the best job possible in a difficult task.

My first four published works were done discovery style with only a hint of an outline. This made the editing process take forever. When I had an accident that left me w a permanent injury that made it very hard to sit down and use a keyboard, I switched to dictation and very quickly realized that dictation kinda requires an outline. Since then, I've drafted faster and edited faster. No shade to people who discovery write because I used to be one and I don't think my stories are worse because of it, but having a solid outline just makes the whole process faster. Thanks for sharing your insights and commentary on Sanderson's class!

Thank you for this! I have recommended to so many people to watch Sanderson’s lectures-which can be daunting-but your video summed them up beautifully. I can tell a lot of work went into this. Thank you, again! It’s also nice to rewatch this when I feel discouraged or don’t know where to begin my writing again. I will be recommending your video and channel!

I got to be in that classroom, Brandon's a good teacher, a great author, and it was really interesting to hear his insight!

I have watched all his sets of lectures and taken notes. This summary still helped to gain a deeper understanding. Thanks.

I love the way you edited this. Way better than the actual lectures, except for lecture #12 and #13. Love math and finance

Jed, your channel is amazing! I love the topics you cover and you are so genuine and honest. So refreshing to see!

I especially love the insight about magic cost as well as character limitations, handicaps and flaws. Giving characters everything, as well as multiple motivations has been a big help to me.

I appreciate your summary of these masterclasses Jed. Thank you very much, mate!

Strong video Jed Herne. Thank you for sharing all these tips!

I took that class a few months ago right before I started writing. It's going a bit stale at the moment, so I needed a refresher. Thanks for that!

Thanks for posting this video! Super helpful and informative!

Excellent video Jed. I'm definitely checking those lectures out. Thanks

THANK YOU SO MUCH for this video, it's going to transform my writing tremendously! 😊 Thank you! 🤗💙

How does this channel not have 500k subs yet!?

I've been watching Brandon's lectures for a long time, but it's very interesting to see the content boiled down to what you specifically believed was the most valuable advice. I think you seem like you could be a great writer.

Thank you 1000 times, this video is a condensed (introductory) lesson on writing in general, I'm trying to start writing something like short stories for now, and I'm trying to focus on what are the key areas I should pay attention to. I know this is most suited for fantasy stories but most of the things you and sanderson say make sense in general

I went to BYU and got to enroll in Sanderson's class! Really is amazing!

Even after having some experience publishing, watching his videos over is a good refresher. Writers never stop learning

Oh well, this is a good summary and reminder about those lecture that also inspired me years ago

I find writing courses to be really hit or miss, and tended to only watch the sanderson lectures when I was hitting a specific problem in my writing because looking for more specific information helped me. I appreciate the condensed version of these courses though because it means I can just watch this video.

It's been a couple of years since I watched Sanderson's videos, so I really appreciate this "Cliff Notes" version. You would be a good addition to the Writing Excuses podcast, which Sanderson co-created. It's a great resource for aspiring novelists.

This overview video was helpful. Thanks so much.

I just stumbled across your channel and this video is spectacular! I've watched his lectures all the way through once, but I'm picking through them again now as I plot my next novel. Brandon Sanderson is truly an inspiration! I have a lot of respect for him too. Also, you structured this video so well! This was such a great recap and you hit all of his key takeaways perfectly.

Thank you for this. I wasn’t able to watch him before, all a bit overwhelming. But your video really helped and I will watch more now. I don’t do magic and sci-if, but this is still very helpful.

I feel like I improved a lot just by watching I'm only just beginning my structure and this improved it but I'm gonna have to do a rewrite of all 5-6 chapters I planned out (ik it's not much but it is for me) Thanks for this video and showing me who Brandon Sanderson is ill go through his playlist in full again Thank you I appreciate the advice you give

Great video. These Sanderson videos are massive and having them distilled is really useful. I greatly appreciate your effort.

Fantastic video! I’ve seen all of the BYU lectures and you did a great job of boiling them down to the key highlights while providing further examples and ideas. Only 5,000 subscribers right now, but mark my words, with this kind of quality content you will break 50k and 100k before too long.

Love your videos!

Great video Jed! Thank you for keeping me inspired.

This was wonderfully concise. Thank you for uploading!

Thanks for this indepth and awesome video, Jed 🙏👏

Great vid! so much detail. Thanks once again

Loved this video, Jed (and not just because of my brief head cameo 👀). I watched the Sanderson lectures a long time ago and it was really great to get a bulletpointed refresher version. I took a lot of notes, and expect some of this to come up in our next coaching session. You've definitely taken and utilized Brandon's advice quite well--not only as a writer, but as a mentor/instructor as well

I'm sorry to hear that I hope you get better

I will be the one to say that these videos will go on living for decades. Man you are making a hell lot of good work! Keep it up. You’re our guide, a teacher and you know what, I will include you in my book somehow 😂

Great video and channel! Thank you so much, so much great useful actionable content!

What a useful summation of the lecture series!

Sanderson is the man. Keep writing ya'll!

Very cool video. Gave me a bunch more to think about when crafting a story. Brandon also seems like a really cool/nice dude

Great vid Jed. Love this

i just finished 'way of kings' and am about to go to get 'words of radiance'. Franky, i love brandon sandersons books

Thanks. I watched his first lecture but couldn’t get myself through all of them. So, the summary was great!!

You’re going to blow up man, your videos are golden and great advice for a writer starting off!

I took this course as well last year (about the same time you did). It gave me the foundation I needed to start and finish my first novel (it took me a whole year). I'm dying to get back into the first draft and start fixing things, but I have other (job related) obligations to focus on first. You finally summary is spot on the money. I'm not writing to be the next big top selling novelist. I write because I have a unique, engaging story to tell, and I loved giving each chapter to my beta-readers to see their reactions and speculation about what would happen next.

Thanks Jed, as fan of Brandon's UKposts videos, I thought you did an excellent job and expressed excitement. I was impressed by your last statement because I have just hooked my 86 year old mother on writing and not only does she have her fist book out, she is actively writing her second book. I can feel her excitement!

I loved this, I’ve watched this lecture series twice now and it’s great to have a quick version. I found the background music highly distracting though

1 minute in and I’m pausing, pulling out a notebook and pen - okay, go on… 📝

It has been interesting watching your "Writing Tips" videos, thank you for creating them. They have served primarily to reinforce my confidence in my own talents. My High School Novel teacher was the first of many to compare my writing style and tone to J R R Tolkien. This was initially hard for me to accept because of my adoration for "The Professor". I do not agree 100% with Mr Sanderson's views on certain subjects, but he does make many solid points. As of Oct 9th 2023, I sent my (multi-media) agent a signed publishing contract (7 novel by Dec. 31, 2026) with Speaking Volumes.

This was very helpful!

Great video

Thank you for this video I’m writing my first novel, it was an draft that I used ChatGPT 3 to flush out my ideas, and then I am now writing it in my own words, the original draft was 46 pages I believe and it was around 14,714words I want to bring the final draft up to 100,000 words so a full novel. But thank you for this video. I want to mention that word count I gave earlier is about 100 words less than that, because that includes my epilogue at the end of the book.

thank you

BRO I DIDNT KNOW YOU WRITTEN THE SIEGE OF TREBOULAIN. ITS ONE OF MY FAVOURITE GAMES ON CHOICE OF GAMES

Can you use both a hard magic and soft magic? Combining them? Or at least hide a hard magic behind a curtain of soft magic? Like the Wizard of Oz almost, with the Wizard hiding behind the curtain using machinery to produce "Magic". But more like Harry Potter, where the protagonist is new to the world of magic, so everything seems so wonderous and amazing. It's so mystical and mysterious, until you slowly start to learn about how it works and how you can use it, then you can slowly start to use it to solve problems, like in the Sorcerer's Stone, when the wizarding trio learn how to use Windgardian Leviosa (Or however you spell it) using magic to levitate an item, then in a later scene, Ron uses the spell to levitate a club of a Troll and drops it on his head. So, the idea here is to create a hard system of magic with rules, however, write the story through the eyes of someone who is naive or uneducated about it. So for most of the book, it looks mysterious, mystical and this godly power that's beyond the touch of human comprehension, but slowly, as the story progresses, the character slowly learns how to use it and the rules of it. As the character learns specific spells and rules, they then can use what they learn to solve problems. So at first, it's mystical and mysterious. Beyond the understanding of mortal beings. Almost like how Frodo surely views Gandalf. However, the protag experiences some event or whatever (That's foreshadowed beforehand) that gives him the ability to use magic. Or maybe he had it all along like Harry Potter did and you can foreshadow that like in Harry Potter. However, over the course of the story, you slowly pull back the curtain, showing the uses and rules of the magic you've established, transitioning (At least in the eyes of the reader) from a soft magic system, to a hard magic system (Even though in the context of the world, it was a hard magic system all along). That way your reader can experience both an awe and mysticism of magic while slowly coming to understand how it works and kinda being impressed at how your character learns and uses the magic to solve the problems, like in Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archives, with Shallen (However you spell her name) using her shardcasting abilities to create illusions to help her investigate and discover the enemies as she learns how her own abilities work.

My favorite books series ever is Sanders Alcatraz series

I really enjoyed these lectures, too. I just hit the 10-year mark since I started writing seriously---so maybe this is my year! LOL I've written 9 books in the past 10 years (and rewrote two of those, so 11 book-length pieces of work total), but time's a little more scarce now that I'm a parent in addition to working a full-time job. But I try to find at least 2 hours a week to write. Some weeks it works out, some weeks it doesn't, but I keep plugging away, because there's no other way to get the work done! I've self-published a handful of books but I really want to try and break into the traditional space with one of my more recent ones. Now if only querying didn't take away from writing time.... XD

I see you take on author clients. Have you had any success stories?

If there's one thing I learned about good writing, is that nobody can teach you it. You need to teach yourself how you can do this. All good writing, while it might _seem_ subjective by its very nature, is actually a fundamental core anybody can unlock in themselves if they have the drive and willpower to do it. Your video and Brandon's lectures are insightful and pave the way for writers out there to find their way into this world covered in pitch-black. What lights along the way, they stumble from what they learn is burned even brighter by the encouragement that's given. So never give up. Keep going and you will be successful.

do you have a video on retcon? and how would you avoid or deal with it?

I dont know what it is about this Sanderson guy but he reminds me of Quentin Tarentino I just bought the first Mistborne book, i havent read a book since the eragon books back like 10 years ago and this book just interests me Would love to start reading again like i used to

So as a new writer im curious when he talks about plot archetypes, where can we find out more about this?

Biggest takeaway: Journey before destination.

Sanderson is pretty decent, but some of his advice is pretty off tbh. His points about the three basic elements of what a story is completely fall apart when you apply them to post-modern literature. Him talking about the promise of conflict/tension is a nice exercise, but I wouldn't label it anything close to a rule.

Hello there! I was interested in the one on one program you talked about, but I’m not at a place in my book where Im ready for that. At my current pace, I’ll be finished with my first draft in a week or two and then I will begin the editing process. I have never written anything before and I know nothing about how to publish a book or even edit one, so I was hoping that you would be able to give me some guidance on that process as I get there. I am writing fantasy (mostly) as well. I’ve just discovered your videos recently, but they are extremely helpful, thank you!

Hi Jared! After watching this made me a big bullish to write my own story’s for fun. But I have a question - the famous authors of modern times like Brandon, jordan, sci fi like frank herbert, Ursula etc, do you think they would had made it even without writing courses/education?

22:33 I got called out so hard here. My entire plot changed because of this disease

How much is the financial investment for the coaching sessions?

Great video! Your advice and experiences keep me motivated. In the non-distant future, people will be posting, "I took Jed Herne's Writing Class."

Check out David Farland's lecture series

Okay, then how do you deal with getting stuck in the outline process? How, when you are writing an outline and doing world building and character development do you get past the point were things could go two different ways, but not both? I've probably started a dozen outlines only to forget about them after months when I can't rectify crucial story elements.

Check out David Farland's lecture series. He taught Sanderson.

‘No food or drink allowed in the auditorium’. Lectures with water bottle. Sanderson is a boss!

I have seen his lectures several times. That's working if you are an English language writter. But I dont know if it will work to publish on my language.

[36:13] The idea that dialogue should engage with the setting is something that I learned as a Dungeon Master. If my NPC didn't slam her knife into a table, or guzzle a drink at the bar, I could tell my PCs wouldn't engage with the space naturally. I keep regressing on that lesson, since I am imagining the space for myself-not my audience. I'm grateful that he made it compared to a white room, since that's where imagination goes to DIE.

Hey Jed, how much writing should we have done before we apply for your coaching program?

That has got to be the longest whiteboard I‘ve ever seen

Im still not understanding what promise is about...

18:29 For some reason I feel like someone or everyone involved in Disney's SW: E9 skipped this part of the class.

I am a worldbuilder. It's been years since I draw the first version of this romanesc medievalish, fantasy world map. But every single attempt at writing a story so far has failed. Perhaps because I avoid outlining as if it was the plague.

I've never been much of a book reader and the only handful of books I've read in recent years are the Harry Potter books, but I've always disliked the usual dialogue format of which is then followed by "X said" and in Y manner. I'd rather know who is speaking and how they are speaking before I read what is being spoken so that I have that appropriate internal voice. So when writing I've been typically formatting dialogue more as how I'd expect it to be formatted in a movie or play script with the character's name followed by a colon and then the dialogue in quotations, but this becomes an obstacle when you want a character to talk who hasn't been introduced with a name yet or they are such a minor character, perhaps even just a background character in a passing crowd, who really doesn't need a name in the first place. In those nameless cases, I might revert to the more traditional dialogue format where it's just part of a normal paragraph, but then I wonder if the two differing formats might be distracting to a reader. I find it interesting that Sanderson brought up the bookisms of how "he said" and "he asked" are invisible to the reader, when for me it's basically the opposite. I find myself flowing much faster and more organically through dialogue when I concisely see dialogue in the script-like format, whereas in the other format I sometimes end up re-reading dialogue because someone else is speaking than the one that I initially thought was speaking. Often I wonder if I should be trying to write screenplays instead of books.

I like formulas and all, but I notice alot of times, when people get too wrapped up into tryin to check boxes. you end up with a industry (not just genres of stories) of people telling the same stories trying to emulate what put the most acclaimed at the craft, in their position. I wanna do something different. I know I might sound like a echo of edginess, but I atleast have to give it a shot.

I don't see the link at 5:44 so here it is - ukposts.info/have/v-deo/eZ5qhYR_qJmm2Zc.html 🙂 Granted, I might just be blind or silly or just don't know how to use UKposts LOL.

Did you actually take the class at BYU or just watched the UKposts videos?

Anyone here, what's the normal length ,words per minute for 30 minutes of free writing? I'm like beginner beginner,idk anything,I just you know ,write for 30 minutes,no outline... nothing

How come you don’t link to his videos?

😂 I can't stop laughing. Bandon is carrying around a water bottle and there is a sign behind him that says no food or drinks allowed in auditorium.

Sorry to break it to you but Brando doesn't even break the top 20 among the most successful fantasy authors. I took his lectures too but thought his sections were a tad too disjointed and tangential. Some cool nuggets in there though. And I liked Kowal's section a lot; she's an excellent teacher.