Lessons on Building Great Products from a Bestselling Fantasy Author

A Brandon Sanderson Stan Post

One of my favorite fantasy authors is Brandon Sanderson: he just writes great stories. However, as a product manager, what most fascinates me is his ability to regularly deliver new books.

Fantasy is well known for authors like Patrick Rothfuss, who has so many ongoing plots we all fear he will never write the third and final book in the Kingkiller Chronicles or like George R. Martin, who everyone worries will die before he completes Game of Thrones, or like Robert Jordan, who did end up dying before he completed the Wheel of Time series, which Brandon Sanderson then took over and finished.

Brandon Sanderson stands out as an exception. He promised us 8 books every 4 years in the Stormlight Archive and he’s not only adhered to that timeline but also written additional books within this series and for other series. And he doesn’t just write a lot: he’s also one of the best-selling fantasy authors of our age.

I wanted to study how he did it and apply that to my own job. Lucky for all of us, Sanderson published his lecture series at BYU on Youtube. The first lecture is an hour —or 30 minutes at 2x speed :)—and worth your time even if you never plan to write. He generously shares his successful, repeatable working model that demands the highest levels of creativity and experimentation.

If you choose to watch his first lecture, you can skip the rest of this post, as I will merely highlight some of my favorite insights from his talks, all directly quoted from Sanderson.

Setting Expectations with Your Partner and Yourself

Brandon Sanderson describes transitioning from writing freely as a single man to balancing writing with family life. Before marriage, he wrote whenever possible. However, once he started dating his future wife, frustrations arose; he was annoyed by her interruptions during his work, and she was irritated by his constant focus on writing (over focusing on her), during social interactions or free time like car drives.

Sanderson combatted that with two things.

First, he instituted a schedule for writing. He does two sessions of writing everyday: 1pm until 5pm and then about 10am until 2am. He shares, now, it “doesn't matter if I have free time. Doesn't matter if the family is away or something like that. I have this barrier in place, and it has been so good for my life. Because it's also good to kind of step out into the real world. People accuse us of living in fantasy worlds. They don't understand. We're not living in fantasy worlds. We don't lose track of the real world. It's not like we are all these people who are schizophrenic and can't tell the difference between hallucinations and reality. That is not what it is. People always say that, and it always bugs me, because that's not what it is. I am constructing something. I'm building something. It's really engaging. It's really fulfilling. But it's not like I'm forgetting the world I live in, and things like that…That barrier lets me step out, live my life as it should be lived, interacting with other people, and it makes me that much more refreshed when I go back to writing.”

Secondly, he shared his writing process with his wife. Understanding his needs, she became a protector of his time, knowing when interruptions were acceptable and when they weren’t. He also involved her in the early stages of brainstorming, which got her excited and made her an even more supportive partner.

Be Descriptive of Emotions Giving Feedback & Silient when Receiving Feedback

A writing group, in this context, is a peer group where each member brings writing samples for critique. In the lecture series, Sanderson mentions taking the class he’s lecturing now and being assigned a writing group that he still uses to this day. 

He offers numerous tips for workshoppers (those giving feedback) and workshoppees (those receiving feedback), which I've found applicable to customer discovery. Below are the two that stuck out the most for me.

For those giving feedback, folks should describe how they feel over what the writer should do. Sanderson suggests, "Particularly when you're newer at this, saying, ‘I was bored,’ is completely valid. There's never a time when ‘I was bored’ is not a valid response to something you were bored by. Saying, ‘You should add a fight scene’ can be really bad advice. Sometimes it could be good advice. If you really know the person, and know the thing, and you know the subgenre and what the writer's trying to do, you could be like, ‘I feel like a fight right here would really snap things together.’ But it can be bad advice. ‘I was bored’ can never be bad advice. It's always valid. Your response to the story always is.”

For those receiving feedback, he advises, “Give it some time. Give it some space. Listen to the feedback and try to understand. Try to get where they're coming from. And understand if that's a reaction you want. Sometimes you want people to be a little confused. Sometimes you want them to want something they haven't gotten yet, because you're going to give it to them in a few chapters. Maybe you're wrong. Maybe you've done something wrong. They're having the complete wrong reaction. They're all laughing at this thing that you thought was really serious. Really important for you to know. But stay silent…Prevent yourself from defending yourself. Prevent yourself from explaining. If you defend yourself, it's just going to make people less likely to give you feedback in the future. If you explain it, then it defeats your chance to explain it right in the writing and have them get it, and you won't know if you are able to get them to understand it through your writing, because you've already explained it and tainted them.”

Framing Success for Yourself

Brandon Sanderson is one of the top fantasy writers of our time. He warns his students, “You might spend the next 20 years of your life writing books and never sell one. It's totally possible. In fact, it's more likely than you becoming me.”

But he also shares this: “That said, everyone I've known who has stuck with this for 10 years or more, and has written the books, none of them regret it. Every one of them is like, ‘Yeah, that was great. I'm so happy I did it. So happy I kept writing my stories. I'm sad I didn't sell. Yes, of course I am. I want to sell a million copies, Brandon, like you did. But it's good for me. I like it. The stories are great. I enjoy them. And maybe someday I'll make it.’ You can shoot for that at the lowest level of success rate.”

As someone young in their 30s building things in my own free time, I feel like those words were said to me—that if I stuck with something for 10 years that I enjoy and is good for me, it would be worth it even if I didn’t sell a million copies like Brandon Sanderson.