How I Taught Brandon Sanderson to be a Better Writer

Did a chance encounter lead to the prolific author's publishing success? (Probably not!)

Welcome to Magic & Ink, a newsletter about magic, fantasy writing, and the creative life.

I know this title is a little clickbaity, but it’s funny to me, and just true enough that I think I can get away with it. I’ll let you judge for yourself!

This is the story of how I started my career as a developmental editor by providing an assessment of an already-published novel to a writer who was on the verge of becoming one of the top-selling SFF authors of the century.

Did I actually influence his writing, and thus his career, in any substantive way? Probably not! This story is more about me then him.

This photo has nothing to do with the story, but it’s a nice writing picture anyway.

Meet the Author

Chances are, if you’re reading this newsletter you like fantasy fiction and you know who Brandon Sanderson is. But just in case you don’t, Sanderson is the author of 30-some novels¹ and numerous shorter works. He has dominated the landscape of the genre for close to twenty years, first rising to prominence when he was selected to finish the phenomenally popular Wheel of Time series after author Robert Jordan’s death. He’s made so much money, including via the most-funded Kickstarter campaign to date, that it probably doesn’t bother him that he hasn’t won a lot of critical acclaim or awards. Fans love him, and he’s been riding the wave of their adulation for a lot of years. If you haven’t heard of him, you can read more about him if you’re curious.

I met Sanderson briefly in 2006, right before he rocketed to genre celebrity. At the time, I was working at a Borders Books, freelancing and single-parenting in my off hours. Those Borders paychecks really helped me scrape by for a few lean years, and I spent all my work hours surrounded by books, so it was a pretty good gig.

One weekday morning, when the store was at its quietest and I was busy shelving, a personable young man blew in through the front doors. He was in town for WorldCon,² he said, and his agent had suggested he visit local bookstores to sign copies of his novels. Disappointed that I wasn’t attending the convention myself, I welcomed the next best thing—the opportunity to hobnob with a published writer in my favorite genre.

I was already familiar with Sanderson’s books—which is to say, I had seen his books on the shelf and read the cover copy. (You read a lot of cover copy when you work in a bookstore.) Cheerfully, I fetched the copies of his books that we had in stock, along with some “Signed Copy” stickers. We had a couple mass market copies of Elantris, his first published novel, along with the just-published Mistborn: The Final Empire, the first book in the Mistborn series.

Since he still had lots of bookstores to visit, he didn’t stay long. But before he departed, I asked him to sign a copy of Elantris to me personally—meeting the author seemed as good an excuse as any to finally read it. He did, and he asked me to email him after I read it.

I have often wondered if he was sorry for suggesting that.

The “Editorial Letter”

A week later, in what might be considered my first editorial letter,³ I sent of a lengthy critical response detailing everything I thought he’d done wrong in his novel. I don’t know what I was using for nerve back in those days, but I wish I had some of it now!

Let me be clear, I did not hate the book! I liked it quite a bit. However, as I explained to him apologetically, I was just a lot better at describing “problems” than talking about what I liked in a work of fiction. As an aspiring novelist myself, I was hard at work teaching myself to how to write, and part of that process was picking apart everything I read, trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t work.

I was not just surprised when he wrote me back, I was horrified. How had I, a bookstore jockey with a single published short story to my credit, dared to offer advice to a writer who had already “made it” in publishing? Whatever nerve I had possessed when I sent my email crawled up under a rock and died right then and there.⁴

He didn’t have to write back at all, of course. He could have answered with a short, polite “thanks for your thoughts” email. I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t a lengthy, thoughtful response addressing each of the points I had made as if I were (dare I even suggest) a fellow author who actually knew something about the craft and not just a hyper-critical reader.

Unfortunately, I don’t have my original email—it must have been submitted through an online form—but I do have his incredibly generous response, in which he quoted and responded to my many, many comments. Honestly, the guy was super nice, and while he did not agree with everything I said, he wasn’t defensive (as writers often are when responding to critiques) and I could tell he was carefully weighing everything I had to say.

Some of the things I commented on:⁵

• The overuse of invented/foreign terms.

• The lack of epic or mythic grandeur.

• The limitations of the tight, third-person POV he favored.

• Characters who think too much like 21st century people.

• What I liked about the characters (or didn’t like).

• Which plot twists I thought were obvious, and which ones caught me by surprise.

• That it was a pretty good book overall, as it kept me up late reading to find out what happened.

Looking at that list now, I can see that it covers a lot of the same ground that I do when I write up manuscript assessments for my developmental editing clients:

• Worldbuilding

• Magic and lore

• Voice and POV

• Characterization

• Plot and Structure

The difference, of course, is that now I’m better explaining why something is working or not, and offering suggestions for corrections that will enhance the story.

The Epilogue

So did Brandon Sanderson actually learn anything from the critique I offered of his first novel? As I said at the outset, probably not. I haven’t actually read many other of his works (just the first Mistborn trilogy) so I have no way of knowing in what ways his craft has improved over time. Sure, it’d be nice to credit myself with his success, but I’m sure I was an insignificant blip on his horizon.

However, I myself gained a lot from this experience. Despite the fact that I was so embarrassed at my cheek for sending it in the first place, I learned that I actually do have a strong grasp of what what makes a good novel (at least a good fantasy novel) and the ability to formulate my thoughts into useful criticism. That’s not a skill everyone possesses, even otherwise great writers. While it would take me a while to get around to offering this service professionally, it fostered a confidence that has only grown in the years since.

I also learned that tearing into a novel critically wasn’t just something I did to improve my own writing ability: I actually enjoy the process of dissecting a work, figuring out how to highlight its strengths, and confronting problems with solutions that can elevate a good book to great and a great book to phenomenal. If I didn’t have to feed my cats, I’d do this work for free, no lie!

In his email to me, Sanderson encouraged me to write him again after I had a chance to read Mistborn, which he believed to be a much better example of his work. Unfortunately, it’s not an offer I ever took him up on—it was a while before I got around to reading it, I think, and I was still suffering from an excess of insecurity after the first time around.

It’s silly how I reacted, looking back, and I’m sorry I didn’t take him up on it. Who knows where such a conversation might have led? At the very least, maybe some of his ability to actually finish the books he writes would have rubbed off on me. I’m pretty sure that in the time it’s taken me to write this newsletter he’s finished another novel, two short stories and an audiobook.

Interested in learning about my developmental editing service? Visit my website.

Have you ever written the author of a book you’ve read? Did you get a reply? Share your experiences in the comments!

1. Honestly, I lost count when I tried to total them up.

2. L.A.con IV at the Anaheim Convention Center, Aug. 23-27, 2006, so this event probably took place on Wednesday, Aug. 23rd.

3. If you’re not familiar with the term, an editorial letter is a set of recommendations an editor sends to an author to help improve a manuscript, whether the editor works for a publishing house or is a freelancer hired by the writer. It can also be called a manuscript assessment or editorial report.

4. I should note that this was not my first time interacting with professional authors. When I edited the ezine Phantastes, I corresponded with well-known genre writers all the time, including Guy Gavriel Kay, Terri Windling, Garth Nix, Jeffrey Ford, and more. The difference was that I wasn’t critiquing their work.

5. I don’t know if I would have the same criticisms now that I did almost 20 years ago. I haven’t read it since, though I still have the signed copy on my bookshelf.