Writing Lessons: Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archive

Leading up to the release of Wind and Truth, I reread Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archive (abbreviated to “Stormlight” throughout).Along the way of revisiting one of my favorite fantasy series, I made some mental notes on how to apply Sanderson’s mastery of fantasy world-building into my own tales and what my fellow fantasy writers might …

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How Video Games Changed My Novel Writing

(Or, A Chance To Gush About Xenoblade Chronicles 3) Once upon a time, I used to be a “story purist.” In other words, I used to believe that books were the unquestioned superior form of storytelling, and dismissed movies, TV shows, and video games as inferior stories. I never thought those visual mediums could come …

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March 2023 Writing Update: Rough Drafts Are…Rough

Writing is hard. You’d think after a decade of serious writing, I’d have it figured out. But part of the problem for writing as long as I have? Story ideas grow and get tangled together and make it tricky to know how all the plots, characters, and world-building piece together. Tied up with that, with …

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Lessons from Over a Decade of Writing

I usually mark my birthmonth (August) with a reflective post about personal life. While the season of transition from graduate school into a full-time job certainly merits a robust personal reflection, I’m not quite ready to try and put into words all that I’m thinking and learning right now. Instead, I wanted to take a …

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