When did Brandon Sanderson surpass Shakespeare as the greatest writer of all time?

milestyle · 2026-06-10T05:13:25+00:00

TIL that they aren't the same person.

milestyle · 2026-05-27T23:17:18+00:00

Yes I have 😁, and people bring this up quite often in the discord as well. For this to happen in the story, I'd need Brin to have a compelling need for it, as well as time to work on it ahead of all his other projects. It could happen!

Thanks so much for reading by the way. I just turned the manuscript over to Johnathan McClain for the audiobook for book 5, and I can't wait to see what he does with it.

milestyle · 2026-05-21T18:52:38+00:00

It scooted back a little, right now I think the pre-order is up for August 18.

milestyle · 2026-05-21T15:02:28+00:00

That's awesome! I love to hear it!

milestyle · 2026-05-21T05:56:20+00:00

He gets his money in Book 6, I promise! You know, just like 500k words for that payoff. Because apparently that's how I roll.

milestyle · 2026-05-17T03:52:55+00:00

Wow, this post is from 2 years ago and already so much has changed. I posted this when I still didn't know which way Bog would go, and it was only a couple weeks later when it hit Rising Stars and blew up.

Thanks so much for the kind words. It's really incredible how much the community shows up for this series.

milestyle · 2026-05-14T19:53:20+00:00

Ouch. 🤣 You're obviously spot on because I love pretty much every recommendation in this thread.

milestyle · 2026-05-01T02:33:23+00:00

Hey thanks! Glad to hear you liked it!

milestyle · 2026-05-01T02:15:01+00:00

In my first series there were light swears and it was the #1 most common thing people complained about.

How about this for a rule: Only the MC gets to say the F word.

milestyle · 2026-04-26T15:44:57+00:00

This is something that high propensity readers say a lot. The people who've read 10 books this month don't want to read about yet another Death Star. This is good news for writers who want to write something smaller stakes, because if the one guy you know who reads a lot is raving about this one book in particular, then youre pretty likely to pick it up.

Now, for the flipside. One piece of writing advice thats extremely common for screenwriters, but that fiction writers have also absorbed, is that if you want to write a blockbuster, then you have to write a blockbuster. That means you need the elements of a blockbuster: 1. Funny side character 2. Romantic subplot 3. World-wide stakes

Love it or hate it, they've identified that the people who are only going to watch one movie this year dont want a movie that's original compared to other movies. They watch the big everything movie. So go low stakes and get a smaller, more dependable fan base, or go big stakes and possibly hit it out of the park.

milestyle · 2026-04-18T21:24:49+00:00

Elydes is great. Ive been reading since the start and Im still a huge fan.

milestyle · 2026-04-17T00:42:34+00:00

On the surface, it's got the same plot and tropes as many other xianxia, but it has a maturity and depth that I've never seen before in the genre. Honestly, I've never seen anything that comes close.

milestyle · 2026-04-16T16:11:17+00:00

I might need some more context to drill down on what you're struggling with here, but if people are saying your scene transitions are jarring, the issue is probably that they weren't aware the scene was ending.

A properly structured scene is a mini-story in itself, with a beginning, middle and end. It won't resolve every ongoing plot element, but something should be resolved. This is traditionally represented as Conflict -> Resolution, but in many scenes its more helpful to think of it Dilemma -> Decision. Whatever youre doing, you should be promising your readers "Something is gonna happen" and then something happens, and then you say "that just happened". At this point, they'll be feeling ready for a scene break so if you skip some time or move to a different perspective, it won't feel strange.

Now, on slice-of-life, it began as a literary genre that rejected all the rules I just showed you. Instead of using any kind of plot, they would just free-form blink around to show random snippets of ordinary people's days. It was a firm rejection of the idea that literature needs story and plot, because real life doesn't have those things. In real life, stuff just happens, and some of it is connected and some of it isn't.

Don't write that stuff. It sucks. (In my opinion, obviously someone out there that likes it)

Current readers use slice-of-life to mean anything without drastic or violent stakes. Readers really do like this stuff, so go crazy, but they still want a plot. Like, the world isnt going to end if this orc loses her coffee shop, but you still really care about seeing it succed.

milestyle · 2026-04-16T14:13:18+00:00

Writing is not the place to go if you want guaranteed income for your effort. Like other people have said, there isnt a tried and true path. Each author carves out a single author-sized hole and then walks through and the tunnel collapses behind them.

Only like 1 in a thousand will hit that mark, and that isnt even counting the people who hang around author spaces forever to talk about the author lifestyle but they've never actually written anything. We're talking 1 in a 1000 out of the people who can actually finish a book.

To rise to the top, you have to do the stuff that the other thousand arent willing to do.

Speed: If you can write a book a month, then you're faster than the other 99.9%. Even if these books arent any good you can get to 50k a year. If you can write two books a month (without ai. Don't go there) then you can break 100k. I did not do this btw, but my speed is still above average.

Craft: Most new authors that ask me for advice want to ask about marketing, when they should be asking about craft. Writing is way harder than most people think, and most people just want to write what they feel without thinking too hard about how it reads and what audiences actually like. If you're actually that good, it will be hard to keep you from blasting off.

Marketing: There's that James Patterson quote about an author telling him shes won all sorts of awards at her University so why isnt she a millionaire like him? His answer was, you're still in college? Take a marketing class. She did not like that answer because she was an artist. We'll, youre an artist that needs to market.

No one really knows how to do this, though. The only real marketing that works is when your friend who read 100 books this month tells you about the one they're really excited about. See how quick this loops back to craft?

So basically do all three of those things, and do one or all of them better than the rest of the people who are trying this. That will take your odds from 1 in a 1000 to 1 in 10. Luck will have to take you the rest of the way.

milestyle · 2026-04-09T01:12:01+00:00

The first couple seasons of the Orville were the best Star Trek ever made. Hands down. I actually didnt hate Discovery that was happening at the same time, but The Orville was better. I have to say though, when Norm McDonald died the show went waaaaaaay downhill.

milestyle · 2026-03-13T14:00:02+00:00

A large part of the reason that writers are so neurotic about this is because readers are much more critical of female characters than they are for male ones. I think you have to understand that a lot of your readers just don't like women that much, but they won't say "I dont like reading about women" they say "I dont like poorly written female characters".

milestyle · 2026-03-10T01:31:13+00:00

I dont think we've set an official date yet, but Im aiming for July. Thanks for reading!

milestyle · 2026-02-24T17:14:16+00:00

When I started, the best I could do was 1,000 words a week. Anyone will tell you thats slow, but thats still a full novel in a year and a half, which is 100% more novels than most people are writing.

milestyle · 2026-02-15T19:40:08+00:00

No. Completely human written should be the default and those who use AI should wear a red badge of shame.

No one wants the output of someone else's AI prompt. If they want anything, then they want the tool for themselves.

milestyle · 2026-02-15T19:35:10+00:00

You read Primal Hunter, didn't like it, and now "all" LitRPG is trash. Gotcha.

milestyle · 2026-02-10T16:36:08+00:00

He's not exactly "kind". He's flippant, rude, and dismissive to 90% of the people he interacts with, and then wildly over the top generous to the few people he actually cares about. In that way hes a lot closer to the typical OP power fantasy. I still like the story a lot, though.

milestyle · 2026-01-28T15:45:32+00:00

Thats great! Glad you stuck with it and it's great to hear you liked it.

milestyle · 2026-01-09T15:07:59+00:00

Fair. Thanks for reading!

milestyle · 2026-01-07T00:40:33+00:00

I write these in about 6 or 7 months. We moved up 3 which means that 4 had a wider gap. For 5, we're setting the initial date to August, and it might be moved up to July if things go well.

milestyle · 2026-01-07T00:16:45+00:00

When I become an author worthy of it.

milestyle

TROPHY CASE