One of my greatest joys as a reader is to discover the behind-the-scenes process of my favorite authors. I would binge a new read from cover to cover, reel from the ending, and then go straight to the author’s website to devour every extra tidbit I could find.
Reading Brandon Sanderson’s annotations alongside a reread of his books was an eyeopening experience. For me, that window into his creative process was illuminating (as a fan) and inspiring (as a writer).
I hope these annotations to my books will be just as interesting for you.
Start with the introduction to the annotations for Petition.
Fantasy maps occupy a weird space for me as a reader. I don’t tend to do more than look at them briefly before I start reading, and I rarely go back to study them in detail afterwards, yet if an epic fantasy novel doesn’t have any maps, it somehow detracts from the reading experience for me. Pretty silly. It’s as if the presence of a map sends some sort of message about the author’s care factor in worldbuilding. Totally unfair, since there are plenty of fantasy authors out there who have put in a great deal of effort into their…
I am a huge Brandon Sanderson fan. Not just as a reader, but as an author, too. His annotations and his unrivaled transparency taught me a lot about the craft of writing, and his YouTube lectures demystified the intimidating process of taking an idea for a story through to a published work. There is nothing that I can do to thank Brandon Sanderson for his generosity, apart from one-click buying every single one of his books. (I don’t think that counts, because I’ve been doing that long before I published.) What I can do, though, is pay it forward. This…