Promise, Progress, Payoff - Plot Theory: Brandon Sanderson's Writing Lecture #2 (2025)

BRANDON: Hey! Welcome to Brandon Sanderson's  2025 Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy  

lectures. Today we're going to cover  plot, specifically the ideas of promise,  

progress, and payoff. So I hope you enjoy the  lecture. We'll be on plot next week as well. 

Hey, everybody! Welcome to class! It's  Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing! Yay! 

CLASS: (cheering and applause) BRANDON: Because this is a year  

where we're recording it, I am on the ball  and have outlined the rest of the semester  

for you. So you can see what's coming up. And  I guess if you're planning to, I don't know,  

go to Aruba one week, you can pick the  week you're least engaged by. There will  

be two guest lectures. Usually I have two.  First one's going to be on February 6th,  

and the second one will be on February 27th. We  aren't 100% sure who those people will be yet, but  

I think maybe we'll try to get indie publishing  people the second one as we are a little closer  

to the publishing lectures, and we'll see  who we bring in for talking about character. 

So that's what we're going to be doing. Like I  told you last time, we're going to go three weeks  

on each topic, and your questions that you write  down in your--take your quiz by 8:45--we will save  

those for the Q&A lecture. And that's when I will  try to dig into those. Usually I get to, like,  

three of them and then there's enough questions  from the crowd and tangents that I don't answer  

everything you write down. But it is the nice  way that we keep role, and it does give me a  

starting point for going into the Q&A lectures. We're going to do plot first. I kind of go back  

and forth on where I start. I should say back  and forth and further forth because there's--.  

Stories are built up generally of three things.  They are built up of your plot, your setting,  

and your character. And the intersection of plot,  setting, and character is conflict. What you're  

looking for is how to create that conflict.  And as far as stories go, setting, plot,  

and character all should exist to create some  sort of conflict, or to facilitate some sort of  

conflict, because that's what your story's about. So I'm going to talk a little bit. I actually  

took notes this time. CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: Yes, I know! Look at that. So what's  the purpose of plot? Right? What do we talk  

about when we mean plot? I often talk about  plot in kind of two different categories,  

and I label them big P Plot and little p plot. A  capital P Plot and a little p plot. Capital P Plot  

is when someone says, "What is your book about?"  That's what you tell them. This is the "what you  

can boil it down to in a sentence or two" plot.  What is The Lord of the Rings about? It's about  

a furry footed British dude taking a magic ring  and trying to throw it in a pit. Right? That's the  

funny way of putting it. But you know what I mean.  Like, what is Lord of the Rings about? It's trying  

to destroy Sauron through destroying this ring  that is the conflux of his power. Little p plot  

is what happens chapter by chapter in order  to keep the reader engaged. So the Plot of  

Lord of the Rings might be destroy the ring.  But the lower case p plot might be, all right,  

there's some orcs here and we can't get past them.  What do we do? Well, we'll dress up like them.  

Right? Like that sort of thing. It's the small,  little problem, and then you resolve it. Small,  

little problem and resolve it. Building toward  larger problems that you're hopefully resolving. 

Next week we're going to talk about plot  frameworks. So today we're not going to  

talk about the Hero's Journey or plot archetypes  or things like that. Instead, we're going to talk  

about the general idea of what plot is for. And  in my mind, plot is for a couple of things. First  

is facilitate conflict. It's going to be the  primary way that you create conflict in your  

story. A thing needs to happen, and the characters  need to do it, and something is standing in their  

way. Pretty obvious. The second thing though, a  plot is there to give the reader some structure,  

to give the reader something to hang onto to give  them a sense that a story is being told and is  

moving along. Plot tends to be the one, because  of these reasons, that is the most difficult to  

innovate upon. Of plot, setting, and character,  I'd say setting is the easiest place to innovate,  

character second easiest. Plot is the most  difficult. There are various--and we'll talk  

about them next week, various plot frameworks.  But there's certain things people expect in a  

satisfying story. And yes, you can subvert those,  and most of the ways you would subvert those just  

makes your story unsatisfying. Now, you may want  to tell an unsatisfying story. There are reasons  

to do that. But in general you're looking to  tell a satisfying story, and there are certain  

things that work for that and certain things that  don't. And because of that, you'll notice that if  

you go on and, you know, start googling plot  and start researching it, people will be like,  

"There's only three plots." "There's only seven  plots." "There's only one plot." Right? The Hero's  

Journey, he would be like, "Yep, there's one plot.  It's been told in all these different ways." But  

he stretched a ton to make that count. I don't  know how many plots there are. But I can tell  

you that innovating here is not necessarily  something that needs to be done. In general,  

if you are combining your plot with interesting  characters in an interesting setting,  

and you have--you are kind of using what we're  going to talk about today in this class, you're  

going to create something that is going to read  and is going to feel fresh and unique. Right? It  

doesn't matter that Dune is Hamlet. Right? Is The  Lion King. Right? Right down to the break in the  

middle of Lion King and Dune, which I've always  found interesting, that both of them are like,  

"We're going to skip all the growing up part."  Right? Maybe it's because Hamlet, he was already  

grown, and Hamlet skipped the whole first half  of the story and Hamlet's the second half. But  

there's something about that story. Son is wronged  as father dies and uncle seizes the throne. Son  

goes away and comes back stronger, maybe crazier  in Hamlet's case. And becomes a rival for the  

uncle's throne, killing the uncle, and restoring  order to the Pride Lands, or whatever they call  

them. Right? To Arrakis. You would not look at The  Lion King and Dune and be like, "Wow, those are  

the exact same story," even though the general  concept, the general structure, is the same  

structure. Right? You've probably, I would guess,  never thought that Dune was Hamlet. Everyone talks  

about Lion King being Hamlet, so you probably  already knew that one. But the fact that they  

share these very similar plot structures, even to  the point that it's like the uncle and things like  

this, doesn't make these stories feel unfresh or  unoriginal. In fact, Dune is probably my favorite  

book of all time. And so because of that you can  use plot as a tool. Plot should be, in my opinion,  

one of these places where the chef knows  what works and can use it to their advantage,  

with only taking pieces and parts. You'll even  notice, like, as I said, when Shakespeare wrote  

this story, to tell the story he wanted to, he  started with Hamlet arriving back. Right? Well,  

when Dune tells the story, it backs up and shows  all of this and the wrongs being committed that  

need to be righted. The stories are trying to do  different things. And so, you know, in The Lion  

King you need cute, plucky animal sidekicks.  In Dune you need an animal that will eat you  

if you walk without rhythm. And so the different  needs are different for the different stories. 

Now, I think that plot breaks down  to this idea of promise, progress,  

and payoff. In all the frameworks we'll talk about  next week and the ways of constructing a plot,  

we'll kind of rely on this same concept. You might  be saying to me, "Brandon, I am naturally more of  

a pantser. I like to write by the seat of my  pants. I don't like to have a structure." As  

I mentioned with Stephen King, he feels that if  he makes an outline he's already told his story,  

and it makes it harder for him to then go tell  his story because discovering the story is part  

of what drives him to write. Don't worry. You can  do all of this while discovery writing. Right? Now  

the frameworks we'll talk about next week, some  of those, if you're a discovery writer, you just  

don't want to use. Right? You don't want to sit  down and use 7-Point Story Structure. But the more  

you learn about the core concepts of what makes  people read books and enjoy them, the more you  

can apply that as you're discovering your story.  And one thing to be aware of is the difference  

between discovery writers and outliners, and  again, everyone falls on the spectrum between,  

and indeed, most people are a little of both and  it changes based on project, most people spend  

about the same amount of time. The outliner spends  it up front. The discovery writer spends it on the  

back end. Right? And these sorts of things we're  talking about are often really handy tools for  

analyzing a story that's gone wrong. In fact,  that's kind of a theme for this whole class.  

When you sit down to write, a lot times writers  are not thinking, "Hmm, what is the progress  

here?" Right? I do because that's how I analyze  story. But I think most people are writing by  

instinct. And then if something doesn't  work, writers back up and say, "All right,  

what's the disconnect here?" And they will often  arrive at things that essentially mean, "I've made  

a promise, but my progress is something different.  How do I fix that?" Well, I go back, generally,  

and make new promises, because the progress that  I'm writing along is what I want to tell the story  

about. So don't worry and feel that you have  to learn all of this up front and apply it to  

your outline before you start writing your book.  Writing will teach you how to do this better than  

any other activity will, as we talked about last  week. So take all of these things, use them as  

analytical tools to help you begin understanding  story. And if things are broken, then maybe you  

can analyze them according to some of the things  we talk about. And if you're an outliner, they  

might be really handy in making your outlines. So questions on any of that before we talk  

about promises? Yes. STUDENT: How much of  

this is just North American culture? BRANDON: Yeah. So how much of this is--? I  

would say Western storytelling traditions. Right?  But really modern Western storytelling traditions.  

How much is it? This is a little bit hard for  me to put a point on because definitely in Asia,  

Japan, Korea, China, you're going to see a  different use of payoff most often. That's where  

they deviate the most. The payoff there, based on  kind of subtle storytelling archetypes over time,  

means something different, and what is satisfying  to that audience can be different. That said,  

they are homogenizing. Whether for good or for  ill, you are seeing more and more of ambiguous  

endings being more popular in the West, and you  are seeing more payoff endings in the East. And  

both are kind of viable. It just depends on what  kind of payoff that you want to have. You still  

generally use, in some of the Eastern styles of  storytelling, even going back, if you're going  

to read Journey to the West, right? You're  going to see kind of the same progress and  

promise methodology. You see very different payoff  methodology. Excellent question. Yeah, go ahead. 

STUDENT: Just out of curiosity, when you're  writing something, like, when you've been  

writing something longer, like Stormlight  or something, where would you put yourself  

on the scale between discovery and outliner. BRANDON: Discovery and outliner. Every author--.  

The question is, so it can be repeated for the  camera, where like on Stormlight in particular,  

would I put myself between outliner and pantser or  whatever. Every author is a pantser, is discovery  

writing at the core as they're working. Right?  Even if you have bullet points, you're still  

discovery writing. Like, nobody's outline is as  long as their story. So you're always discovery  

writing something. I remember a famous story that  I was told that I have not been able to confirm.  

I tried very hard, and I think it might just be  apocryphal. But the story I was told when I was  

young is that in the movie ET the screenplay just  said, "Elliot and ET escape on the bikes." Right? 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: At least in one of the drafts,  

and then that became the most iconic scene in  the film. A lot of times your outline will say,  

"The characters escape." And then you have to  discovery write that. Right? So the outliner,  

you know, it's a bit of a misnomer to call anyone  truly an outliner, because it's just how much  

pantsing you are comfortable with. I tend to fall  much more on the outlining side for everything,  

and the longer the series, the more detailed  my outlines are. That is because I'm kind of  

throwing myself footballs and then trying  to catch them 15 years later. Right? 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: And the  

better guess I have where I am, the easier it  will be to catch those footballs. That said,  

I knock out walls that I would have considered  load bearing, and I change things around. And  

as you write, the story matures. And so even  myself, who I consider myself one of the more  

hardcore outliners that I know, I would say that  more discovery writer than outliner in general.  

Just compared to other people I outline more. And here's a fun thing for you. Anecdote time,  

and then I'll get to this question. I have been  on many panels on writing, and I generally find  

myself one of the few outliners. This has changed  over time. I find that there are more outliners  

now than there used to be. But I still tend to  be in the minority. And so I talk about myself  

as kind of being odd sometimes as such a strong  outliner. I once sat on a panel in Germany,  

and I kid you not, I said this, like how I do it,  and all the Germans looked at me and they're like,  

"No, that's how it's done." CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: I'm like, "No, there's discovery  writing." They're, like, horrified. They're like,  

"People do that without a structure?" I thought  it was funny. It's a little bit of a stereotype,  

but it literally happened that all the Germans  are like, "It's insane to not have an outline." 

All right. Question here, and then  we'll do this one, then we'll do--yeah. 

STUDENT: How do you come to  terms with dropping plots or  

plans that you feel are core to your story? BRANDON: How do you come to terms with dropping  

plots or plans that you feel are core to your  story? How do you come to terms with killing  

your darlings, which is a famous screenwriting  terminology for this sort of thing. You tell  

yourself a lie. OK? I'm going to tell you what  the lie is. "I will find a much better place  

for this character, plot, or idea, where it can  shine in its own story." And then 9 times out of  

10 you won't, because that idea actually wasn't  that great. You just built the whole story upon  

it. The story did evolve because the process of  building a story is where the real creativity  

takes off. And as you start writing it, you start  applying all of your ideas, and that thing that  

started you actually is not as good as the rest of  it, and part of you realizes it. Once in a while,  

that 1 out of 10, that lets you have plausible  deniability on your lie. Once in a while that  

1 out of 10 becomes its own story, and it  deserves that space and time. I will say this,  

just as a blanket. I almost always throw away my  first chapters, often my first several chapters,  

of a given book, and write them over once  I'm finished. This is how you can tell,  

even though I'm an outliner, discovery writing  and really focusing on the progress side of this,  

which is in many ways the most important but the  least showy. Right? It's the one that people pay  

attention to the least but it's 90% of your book.  Once you know what that progress is, you then know  

how to signpost it for people to enjoy it, and  throwing away your early chapters is really common  

in the industry. So this is one of the reasons  why it's best not to become--where's Nate? Not to  

become an eternal--hey, you were right there, and  I just looked past you--to learn as Nate has done  

to not keep revising your first chapters until  you've finished your book. Because for most of us,  

you won't really be able to do that until you've  gotten far enough along to know how to make those  

promises. So thank you for being, two years  running, my really great example on this. 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: All right. I'm going to  

go into promises. Then we will do more Q&A. OK? So, promises. Promises are the easy one. OK?  

You should not stress promises at the beginning  of your book because once you learn your progress,  

and once you've written an ending, and if you're  a discovery writer it'll be a bad ending. Don't  

stress that either. Once you know what the core of  your book is about, throwing away three chapters  

and rewriting it so that your promise nails what  you want to do in your story is easy. Throwing  

away 40 chapters in the middle is hard. Right? If  you just look at the weight of time. But promises,  

in many ways, are the most important. They're  the easiest, but most important. Why are they  

most important? Well, you might have heard people  talk about how important your hook or your first  

line is and things like that. I find rarely do  first lines actually matter. We like to talk  

about them. Usually, it's your first couple of  pages that really matter. And yes, a zinger of a  

first line can be really great. Right? You know?  What is the great ones? You can go look at some  

of the great ones. What is that? STUDENT: "Call me Ishmael." 

BRANDON: "Call me Ishmael" is a really great first  line. Snow Crash has a really great first line.  

You know. 1984 has a really great first line.  Right? Like, there's a bunch of really great  

first lines. They're awesome. Having one of those  is worth doing. But really, your first chapter,  

your first few pages, they are important because  that's where someone's going to decide whether or  

not to put your book down. And that's dangerous.  And it's also dangerous for you because most  

of the books you read, the authors are actually  relying on something before the first line to not  

make you put the book down, and that is the name  on the title. Right? So when you pick up The Way  

of Kings, and you read The Way of Kings, I can get  away with so much in that book because I'm trading  

on my name and popularity. Right? CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: Like, how do I pitch Way of Kings? I  say, "This is the book to read once you trust me." 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: You might trust me because  

your friend won't leave you alone and wants you  to read it. You might trust me because you tried  

a different book. Once you trust me, you can read  The Way of Kings. It has three prologues. That's  

a terrible idea. Don't do that. CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: Right? Only one of them's named  “Prologue.” But I cheated and named one  

“Prelude.” Right? CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: And then the next chapter is a  prologue also. It's just called “Chapter 1.” 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: It really is. If  

you haven't seen it, it's the one from the eyes of  the kid who's on the battlefield. It's not even,  

you know, a main character. Right? So don't do  that unless you are willing to get the--how shall  

I say? Unless you're willing for people to just  put your book down. You got a question on this? 

STUDENT: I do with promises. BRANDON: Yeah. 

STUDENT: In larger series. BRANDON: Yes. 

STUDENT: How do you keep promises between books? BRANDON: How do you keep promises between books? 

STUDENT: You have to chain people  between books and you can't do  

that by making a promise each book. BRANDON: Yes, you can. You can make the  

promise each book. But a lot of times it depends  on the structure of your story. All right? A lot  

of romance novels do this by saying,  "Here is a whole family of unmarried,  

young, eligible people." CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: Book One's about the eldest. Guess what  Book Two is about? Right? Inherent structure.  

You can promise that in your first chapter if  you do it right so that everyone knows, "Oh,  

it's going to be a seven-book series  because there's seven girls." Right? 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Then there's cousins,  

so we're going to keep going. CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: That's how you know if a series made  money, if the cousins start getting married. 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: I'm joking, but it's real. 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: But you can also do that. Like, if  

you are an established author, there is a promise  that this is the first of a trilogy. People are  

picking it up. The actual packaging of the book  can give you your promise of sort of structure.  

In The Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan promises, "At  the end of this book series, the Dragon Reborn  

will fight the Dark One." He said he'd get there  in three books when he pitched it to Tom Doherty. 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: I have that straight  

from Harriet, his wife. CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: He thought he could do it in three  books. And the first book was going to end  

with him taking the sword that was not a  sword from the stone that's not a stone.  

Right? If you've read the series, that's Book  three. And then it just got longer from there. 

Discovery writers, this is what happens when  discovery writers get series. But he made that  

promise. Right? Oftentimes if you have a big  series, it can be really handy to make one of  

the kinds of promises. The kinds of promises can  be, this is a large, continuing story and there's  

something cool at the end. It can be, here are  seven sisters. It can be, these are the continuing  

adventures of said character. Then you just name  your series something like The Blank and Blank  

Files, or The Blank and Blank--. You know, The  Dresden Files are a great example of this, right?  

Then each one is going to be a self-contained  adventure. That's your promise, right? You can  

do all of these things. But may you be so lucky as  to have to worry about this. Let's talk about the  

promises you should be worrying more about right  now. Because you're going to be looking at making  

a couple of big promises in the beginning of your  story, and they don't--they aren't all innately  

obvious. The first is, you often want to make a  tone promise. OK? A tone promise is separate from  

the plot promises that you're otherwise making.  What is a tone promise? Well, a tone promise is a  

way to tell the reader "This is the kind of story  you're getting into, and this is the sort of feel  

that it's going to have." If your story is going  to involve a lot of humor, you want there to be  

jokes early on. If this is a story about tragedy  and it being grimdark, well, you start your story  

with a viewpoint protagonist who gets beheaded  by someone who doesn't want to kill him. Right?  

Game of Thrones. Right? Right? If you want--you  give a tone promise through descriptions. Naming  

your characters the Stark Family is a tone promise  that George Martin made in those books. Whereupon,  

if you're going to name your wizard school  Hogwarts, and your Gandalf is named Dumbledore,  

you are giving a promise of whimsy. Right? And  things like this. The way that you're naming  

things, the way you're introducing your stories,  the way you're using your prose in your opening,  

is going to give someone an important promise  about what your story is about. This is why  

the prologue became a really big thing in epic  fantasy, because epic fantasy wanted to start  

its plot slow. Epic fantasy generally leans  to the sort of progression fantasy that is,  

you know, like a lot of the lit RPGers do this  very explicitly these days. If you don't know what  

that is, it's a very popular genre, particularly  in indie publishing, where your characters have,  

like, bars of experience bars and level and things  like that, like they're in a video game. But most  

epic fantasy is the story of the young nobody who  ends up saving the world. I wouldn't say most,  

but a large number of the very popular ones. It's  the traditional hero's journey sort of thing.  

Those stories tend to start with a young person  standing and looking up at the suns and imaging a  

world beyond. Right? But, because of that, that's  not the tone of the whole story. The tone of the  

whole story is we're getting chased by space  wizards and things are exploding. So what do  

these stories do? They add a prologue that is  basically there to give you a tone promise. We  

start with the door being blasted off and laser  fire ad a dark Samuri coming through the smoke,  

and, you know, using magical powers. And  then we cut to young, idealistic everyman  

standing and being like, "Wow. What's beyond the  stars?" The answer is space wizards and lasers. 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: But you know that, and he doesn't yet.  

One of the most masterful uses of this is Robert  Jordan's Wheel of Time, which is going to start  

with a young man on a farm, and things are going  to feel creepy. Right? It does feel creepy. But  

the main story is the story of what happens if you  get too much power, and you might kill everyone  

that you love but you need that power to save the  world. That is the basic premise. So what does he  

do? Prologue, hey, there's a person who has all  this power but has gone crazy and killed everyone  

he loves. Right? You will see this very commonly  as one of your ways to make a tone promise,  

to the point that it's almost a cliche now, so you  need to be using it carefully. Don't do it just  

because it's done. Do it because your story really  benefits from it. And be aware that if there are  

lots of people doing it, then it's harder to stand  out doing it. That said, I did it in Stormlight.  

I didn't in Mistborn. Right? I used that kind  of tone promise prologue for different reasons.  

That's why Stormlight has two prologues. "Here's  one tone for the whole series, melancholy about  

these people who have been immortal, and things  are falling apart." Next tone promise, "Hey,  

assassinations and wars!" And then, you know,  yeah. What's that? Yes. And then number three,  

oh, the poor kid on the battlefield. That's  going to come back, isn't it? Hey! Yes. I  

knew why I did each of those prologues but,  yeah, it is a lot. It is a lot to swallow. 

Other reasons, things that, your promises that  you're going to make. Some stories choose,  

and you don't need to do this, but some stories  choose to do an opening, what we call a cold open,  

which is actually what Star Wars is too, starting  in media res, right at the beginning. But they  

often will do this little mini story at the  beginning. And the purpose of this is to say,  

"Here is our story in microcosm. We're going to do  it in five or 15 pages, and then we're going to do  

it in 150 pages." Indiana Jones loved to do this.  Right? The first one is really excellent at this.  

Indiana Jones, cool adventurer, going to overcome  trials. It's going to be really hard for him,  

but he's going to use his wits and his whip to  overcome these, and at the end he's going to  

lose. Right? That is the opening to Indiana Jones  and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. And then the rest  

of the movie is the exact same thing done a second  time at length and in slightly different ways. You  

will see this used pretty commonly as your sort of  promise of "here's what my story is." Often when  

you have a cold open, that's what the cold open is  for. "Here's our characters pulling a heist so you  

can know how good they are at pulling heists." And  then we're going to use that either to replicate  

it, or something's going to go wrong with the  next heist, so you knew how it was supposed  

to go. And then this whole story is about what  happens when it goes wrong. Excellent ways to  

kind of introduce your characters and things  like that. Sometimes your opening does that. 

A lot of times, you want your opening to give  you a promise of what the plot of the story is  

going to be, even if you don't do it in microcosm.  You want to introduce some metaphor for the main  

conflict. And this is difficult sometimes, because  sometimes your main conflict won't come until much  

later. Sometimes it will. For instance, Star Wars,  hey, it's right up there. We need to get the Death  

Star plans. We're going to blow up the Death Star.  Boom! In the cold open and in the tone promise  

you've got it all. Sometimes though you don't.  Right? Like, what is Lord of the Rings? Are we  

going to find out the plot of Lord of the Rings?  Well, it kind of has the mini thing. You gather  

your group of friends. It's really hard. You get  to this place. That's Rivendell. And then you do  

it again, and it takes three books that time. CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: But a lot of times your character is,  like, not going to discover what the big problem  

is until around the end of Act 3 if you're using  the act structure. This is a problem for giving  

a promise about the plot. What do you do? Well,  sometimes you just let the tone promise handle it.  

Sometimes you spend those opening things saying,  "Here's the tone of the book. Here's my character  

and why you should like them. Now we'll introduce  a problem that is really hard to overcome." And  

that is fine. You don't have to promise all of  these things. Sometimes you try to find a mini  

way to introduce what the character's conflict,  or the main conflict might be in that opener. What  

am I talking about with these sorts of things?  Well, sometimes you will read a book or see a  

film where a character is trying to fix a broken  down hunk of junk and then, you know, I mean,  

the Transformers movies do this. It's about "I  need a car, Dad. Car, car, car. Oh, I found this  

car." Well, the movie's going to be about cars  and getting cars, and you kind of have this little  

mini introduction to what the character wants and  why they can't have it. And this is really kind of  

what you're introducing in this opener if you're  trying to get to kind of your character promises,  

is what do they want, what do they need, why  can't they have it? And you can kind of start  

there and then through the capital P Plot at them  at the end of Act 1, as long as your lower case p  

plot kind of either gives a promise of tone or is  in microcosm some sort of picture, small snapshot  

of the larger picture that is going to become  the book. This is why all of this can be done  

pretty easily in retrospect. Right? Once you know  where you're going, you can start making these  

promises a lot easier. So I'm going to go off of  promises for a second. I'm going to let you ask  

me questions for a second, and I'm going to look  and see what--yes. I think I got to it all. Yeah. 

STUDENT: What about just, like, skipping the  entire first part of your story altogether? 

BRANDON: Yeah, it's done. It's done. Anything  can be done, and it can be done well. I mean,  

I just referenced Hamlet. Hamlet essentially  skips of what most people would do, it skips  

Act 1 of this very classic story that I would  be willing to bet during Shakespeare's time,  

because this is how Shakespeare worked, he had  heard that story. I mean, it's a really common  

story to be telling, you know? The prince who  has to reclaim his kingdom from the person who  

overthrew it. He'd heard that story. And then  he chose to skip Act 1 and start with Act 2,  

which is weird. I'm talking story structure  act, not playwriting acts, which are different  

in that case. Right? Same terminology, but they  mean different things. So this happens all the  

time. You will--you've probably seen many a story,  Monkey Island 2 does this--oh, there's a deep cut,  

Monkey Island--where you have a character  start with some interesting thing happening,  

and then--record scratch--you're probably  wondering how I got here. Emperor's New  

Groove, right? Right? CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: And then they tell Act 1 in flashback,  catching you up to oftentimes the middle of Act 2,  

or sometimes even the end of Act 2. And then they  launch into, you know, that. You've probably seen  

that. But there are plenty of stories like Hamlet  that just say, "Pick it up from context. We aren't  

doing Act 1. We're in the middle of a story."  In fantasy, I would say that the Malazan Book  

of the Fallen loves to do this. It's just like,  "Boom! We're going! Figure out where we are if  

you can." So yeah, totally doable. Yeah. STUDENT: What if you switch between tones  

back and forth deliberately, like, for more of a  thriller tone to kind of a travelogue, and then  

back into a thriller, as the story progresses? BRANDON: Yeah. Excellent question. What do you  

do if you are going to be switching between  tones, your example being a pretty good one  

of travelogue, thriller, travelogue, thriller. So  you can promise both of that at the beginning. And  

I would really suggest that you do. You can do  anything. You don't have to give any promises.  

Famously, the big breaker of all of these rules  is Into the Woods. If you haven't seen Into the  

Woods, it, like, it starts off. It's like, "Here's  all these people on their adventures." And then  

promises are stomped flat when you come back from  the intermission. Goodbye, promises, sometimes  

literally stomped flat. And the thing about that  is, he very cleverly does something we're going to  

talk about in twists, where he makes you want  the tone to change. And so oftentimes there's  

that. But with this sort of story, you could make  promises at the beginning, something in microcosm  

that's like, you know, "this story is about these  kinds of things." It's always more difficult. More  

difficult things make you grow. And if you do them  right--when you break the rules--. Here's kind of  

a rule of thumb that you could therefore break.  I don't know. Here's a rule of thumb. Things that  

break the rules have a harder, a bigger threshold  to overcome to grab the reader's attention. But  

once they do, they tend to have a stronger and  more dedicated following. Blandness tends to  

get fewer dedicated followers. whereas something  that is doing what it shouldn't but makes it work  

tends to, when it gets big, tends to be very big.  And this is a reason why, for instance, there are  

within some genres--let's use romance. Within  romance there are some very formulaic stories  

that people still read and love. Right? But they  don't really capture people. You read them. You  

dispose of them. You read the next and you dispose  of them. The ones that break the rules a little  

bit--It Ends with Us is a great example of this.  It's not really a romance novel, but kind of is,  

but kind of isn't. Suddenly, when those take off  they can take off really big because they are  

standing out. They are breaking those rules. But  they take more inertia. I always say--. I'll get  

to you, but I've got a question back there after  this. I always say that books, all of them have,  

like, these certain red marks against them. Right?  And every great book has a ton of these. Your job  

is not to get rid of all of the red marks, a red  mark being something that would make someone put  

the book down, make it harder to get into. Your  job is to get rid of the ones that aren't integral  

to the piece of art you're making, and then  you try to rely on the ones that are integral,  

you can't get rid of, to be things that also  distinguish it. Way of Kings has three prologues.  

What does Way of Kings get from that? Well, it's  really hard to get into. If you're going to put  

down The Way of Kings, like, most of my books,  if you read the one-star reviews, they're very  

different for The Way of Kings. The one-star  reviews just could not get through the first 10  

chapters. Too much going on. Too many names. Too  many characters. And Kaladin is way too depressed. 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Right? But because of that,  

I can start really low and go really high. I can  then world build so much that when it all clicks  

it's so distinctive and interesting it's not like  anything you've read. I'm able to do things with  

this red mark that you could not do with a book  that didn't have it. So as long as you are using  

them to their fullest, yes, they will break the  rules. Right now, to sell in fantasy, they say,  

"We want 120,000 words," traditional published.  The Way of Kings is 400,000. Right? Elantris was  

250,000 when I submitted it, and I got it down to  200,000. As long as you're earning that 200,000,  

then suddenly it becomes--. Does that make sense? So yeah. Let's go back here, and then up here,  

and then we'll see where we are. There was one  back there in the corner, and I didn't want to  

ignore you because it's hard to see. So yeah. STUDENT: About promises, and like you said that  

the first few chapters are easy to, you know,  edit after the fact. Do you find you're also  

editing a lot in the middle, keeping up with your  promises that you found you've made at the end? 

BRANDON: Well, that's more progress. We'll talk  about progress next. So I'm glad you asked that.  

I'm not doing as much. Mostly, I'm trying to  make the ending and the promise match what is the  

interesting parts of the middle, is really what  I'm shooting for. But I'm a bad example on this  

because I generally know my ending. So my progress  and my ending usually align pretty well. It's just  

nailing the right promise at the beginning is much  easier after I've actually written that ending. 

All right. Down here. STUDENT: How do you, like, how do promises scale  

in, like, the length of the story? Like,  say you, like, have, like, a shorter story. 

BRANDON: Yeah. STUDENT: Like, installed in,  

like, a past mythology? BRANDON: Yeah. 

STUDENT: How does that scale? BRANDON: So how do promises scale  

with length of the story? The example being you've  got a smaller piece, maybe part of mythology or a  

short story. So in a short story, and maybe we'll  try to get Eric in during one of the weeks I'm  

gone to talk short stories, everything just has to  be trimmed down, but it also has to be distilled.  

It's not just a matter of writing shorter. It's  writing in a more distilled way. So you still  

need to hit that promise. In some ways you need  to hit it harder, because it does need to be,  

like, in your first paragraph in the short story.  Rather than the fantasy book where you can spend  

a whole prologue giving us a tone promise and  then switch characters. You just can't do that  

in a short story. Right? Or you could. You can  do anything. But in most short stories I wouldn't  

recommend it. So therefore, what you're trying  to do is you're hitting it just really hard. 

In a long story, you can do what I did and have  three separate chapters doing three separate  

promises. Right? Before you even start your book.  Readers will look at the length of your book and  

they will determine how long they'll give you to  start getting around to it based on that length. 

Yeah. STUDENT: Can you and should you make  

new promises as you progress through the story? BRANDON: Can you and should you make new promises  

as you progress through the story? The answer is  yes and yes, asterisk. Right? It depends on how  

long your story is, and it depends on what kind  of twists you're going for. Most stories will  

be making new promises. You'll be introducing a  new character, and you're going to make a promise  

about that character, usually. Every character's  going to have some innate promises attached to  

them. Usually this is with their character arc.  Right? And we'll talk about this in probably  

actually Sanderson's Second Law. But the idea is  you're going to attach to them flaws, handicaps,  

and challenges. Right? And you're going to, like,  you know, you're going to figure out--you're  

going to signpost which of those are going to be  overcome, which of them are going to be expunged,  

where the character's going to grow or fail to  grow. Right? And so every character is--. But each  

little plot sequence will often have a promise. In  fact, every chapter generally has one. Oftentimes  

chapters, just like, unfortunately, as frustrating  as it is to go back to your high school classes,  

your teacher is like, "Thesis paragraph." A lot  of the best chapters start with a stealth thesis  

paragraph that introduces what the chapter’s  going to be about and what you're going to learn,  

and at the end will have a stinger of a line  that indicates, you know, now you've learned  

it. Right? But it depends on the type of plot  that you have. We'll get to that in progress. 

All right. Where are we? I need to move to  progress. We're going to move to progress. If  

there's time at the end, I'll take more questions.  But we got progress, and progress is the most  

important of them. And so save your question, and  when I do questions at the end after payoffs you  

can reference back. OK? But let's talk progress.  All right. Hmm, my notes. Yes, yes, notes. 

You absolutely control progress in your story  to a greater extent than you think. It's pretty  

easy to explain this. Right? At any point in  your story, let's say you're writing a romance,  

you could write, "He stopped being stupid, and  so they got together and got married. The end."  

At any point you can just write that. At any  point Tolkien could have written, "And Bilbo  

fell through a wormhole, appeared in Mordor, and  dropped the ring into the thing, and everyone was  

saved." Right? You've maybe read stories where  at the ending a writer rushed this a little  

too much and you felt a little bit like Frodo  had been dropped through the wormhole. Right?  

We call that a deus ex machina. Right? You control  time and progress absolutely in your story. You  

as a writer, I could give you the challenge right  now to say, all right, you need to spend 50 pages  

and only one second can pass. It would be really  boring, but you could all do it. You just describe  

everything in the room. Right? And then get into  philosophy. It's in the character's head. And  

then, you know, do a flashback or whatever. You  could do 50 pages, and one second has passed. I  

bet you've read books that feel like that before. CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: Those of you who like manga, I hear  there's lots of filler chapters sometimes. Yeah.  

So you can also be like, "And a thousand years  passed." I've read books that use structures like  

this. Right? You control time. You control  progress. So your job as a writer is not to  

make things progress. It is to give a sense of  satisfying progression through a story. And you  

do this by deciding a couple of things. First is  how fast your progress is going to be. Your short  

story's going to go faster. You're also going to,  if you're writing, say, a thriller, you're writing  

a story where a lot of the opposition is external  for obstacles to overcome. Character's got to  

fight this, grab this, get to this place. Right?  I mean, Tenet is this. It's almost all external,  

and it's the next problem, and the next problem,  and the next problem. Those stories are paced  

very differently from the story about a character  wrestling with whether or not it's right to kill  

your uncle, you know, or how you would kill your  uncle, and, you know, if you'd even make a good  

king or, you know, how awful it is that you're  driving your girlfriend insane. Like all of this  

stuff, you're wrestling with all of this. Right?  That has a very different pacing. You're going to  

decide kind of how your pacing is, and it's nice  to match it to your story and to your own natural  

writing style. So how fast do you want it to go? The most important thing you'll probably decide  

is what kinds of progress you're going to make and  how you're going to signpost that to the reader.  

This is a little bit of a hard one to explain,  so give me some time on this. There are lots of  

different types of progress you can make in a  story, and you want to generally match that to  

what your climax is going to be. For instance, if  you are telling what is basically a mystery plot,  

which doesn't mean you're writing a mystery,  but your plot is based around characters  

lacking information and needing to find this  information, and your ending is going to  

involve a big informational reveal. The mystery  story is obviously the best example of this.  

Right? A whodunit. We have a murder. We know  somebody did it. We don't know who it is. The  

detective is going to, over time, sort through and  discover clues and at the end reveal who did it.  

Information style plot. Right? A lot of stories  have mysteries built into them. In these cases,  

your progress is measured by information. What  clues have been given? What suspects have been  

discovered? And which ones have been eliminated?  You therefore often want to find ways to signpost  

that progress is being made. You can do this in a  lot of ways. If it's a mystery, the detective is  

saying, "I've almost got this. I feel like I'm so  close." You will watch a lot of mystery stories do  

this. "We're getting closer. We're almost there.  We need but one more piece, Watson." Right? And  

there are these signposts that are saying you  are getting there. And you are, at the same time,  

giving this information to the reader. A relationship plot, which buddy cop movies  

and romantic comedies follow the same structure  for these. Right? It's just whether there's a fist  

bump or a kiss at the end. CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: In these sorts of stories, what you're  going to be doing is the relationship is going  

to be making progress. You're going to start  off with a very clear indication these people  

do not get along. And then you're going to show  ways that they do. But then there's going to be  

backsteps occasionally. But then you're going  to, through the course of the story, be like,  

"Wow. These two people work better together  than they ever did apart. They are filling  

holes in each other's lives." And so when they  finally get together, that's your climax. And  

the trick with this is stories often have  multiples of these going on at the same time  

that are different things and identifying  which is the most important to your story,  

and therefore the key component to your ending, is  actually really important. Guardians of the Galaxy  

is ostensibly an adventure story about get the  McGuffin and prevent the world from ending. But  

the real story is can these people work together?  And almost everything that is not an action scene,  

and even some of the action scenes, is a  relationship plot. And so that movie really  

cleverly has its climactic moment being where  the main character, who has refused to take his  

mom's hand when she wanted to give him a hug when  she was dying, takes the hands of his friends,  

and they all take each other's hands, and then  together that, you know, with a dance battle. 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Is what beats the bad  

guy. Right? It is not necessarily that, you know,  the McGuffin beats the bad guy. It is literally  

the power of friendship. CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: That defeats the bad guy. And that when  a plot really works, that's what happens. And to  

do this, what gets really tricky is you sometimes  have to identify the difference between kind of  

the trappings of your story and your A plot  and your B plot and what people are going  

to think they are. Guardians is a great example.  Like, ostensibly your big P Plot is actually get  

the McGuffin. Chase down the McGuffin. Get the  McGuffin. Clear our names to prevent the world  

from being destroyed. But the actual little p plot  is character, is can we get along? Can we become  

friends? And so you're going to have multiples  of these. And usually you want to pay them off  

all together. You just kind of have to decide what  your soul of your story is. The longer your story,  

the more souls of your story that you can have.  And often you can introduce things like this,  

have a whole arc about people, you know, becoming  friends, and then go into Act 3, and solve the  

McGuffin problem. Guardians of the Galaxy doesn't  do this, does it right on top of each other, but  

you can do things like that. You've probably read  stories where--. For instance, Moana. Moana has a,  

you know, a sub arc for Maui in the middle of it.  It's handled--that's a really good movie, but it's  

handled kind of clunkily with Maui's return. But  they're trying to do this. Right? They're trying  

to have, like, "We're not going to do this at the  main climax, just right before it," so Maui has  

his character climax and comes back and things  like this. So figuring out and identifying what  

your various plots are and how you're going  to make them all have a sense of progress is  

really vital, I think, for making a story work. A page turner is usually a story that really  

understands progress and how to dole it out. A  boring book, when people get--you know, when you  

don't write it on purpose like I did--. CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: Those who aren't laughing, I literally  released a book called The Most Boring Book Ever  

last year. It was a kids' book though. A book  that people are like, "Boring," or "I got lost,"  

usually the signposts of progress are not there.  Now, a big reason the signposts of progress can  

not be there is that you gave someone a really  interesting promise, and then you as a writer  

got really interested in something else, and you  have a giant subplot going somewhere else that  

doesn't seem to advance the main story. The Last  Jedi does this as a film. You know, Last Jedi does  

this. And so what happens is Finn is a character  whose been introduced to us in the first movie,  

then reintroduced to us in the second movie as  a guy who cares about his friend Rey and really  

wants to go find her and help her. And then the  plot says, "You know, I did promise that. But what  

if you let some horses go free?" CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: "What if you really needed  to learn that horses should be free?" 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: And Finn's like, "Ah, my friend Rey,  

the fate of the universe, Luke Skywalker. I want  to go to my friend Rey." And the plot's like,  

"Ah, but those horses." CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: And not everyone had this experience, but  it was a lot of people, and it was the experience  

I had. I'm like, "Why are we here? What are we  doing? I am not feeling that this is progressing  

the promises made to me by the story." And  so whatever is interesting happening there,  

we don't invest in it. I had this problem  in Oathbringer where I'll try to explain  

it without giving too many spoilers. I had a  plot. I'm going to draw on the board for you. 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: A little harder  

to draw on the board in this one. All right. Oh,  I'm supposed to use black because the camera can  

pick it up better. So you all know to take  your quiz. It's already past. Right? No. 

LYNN: No. BRANDON: No. No. It's 7:45, not 8:45. Yeah. 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: It's all past. You all fail. 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: So sorry. Come back next year. 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: So I had a story where  

characters were right here. And I knew they needed  to be right there. Right? Characters all are kind  

of set adrift. They don't know what they're doing.  They're in a new environment. They land here and  

they all are like, "Well, if we can get to this  place then we can get out of here." And so they  

all make a plan to go to this place. And then I  have them going there. And then they get diverted  

by something. And then they get diverted. And  whoa! They end up where I knew they needed to be  

all along. Readers were so bored with this plot. CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: Right? Which was shocking to me, because  the new environment that I had put them in,  

I'd done a lot of worldbuilding. The sort  of things that make my stories pop I had  

put in there. This is why we will talk about it.  Worldbuilding is actually the least important of  

the three. It is. I'm sorry. CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: Great worldbuilding with bad  characters and bad plot is an encyclopedia. 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Great characters and great plot  

with bad worldbuilding is still often an excellent  book. You can probably name them. The fact that  

Time Turners break the entire universe of Harry  Potter wide open does not prevent that from being  

the strongest book in the entire series. Right? CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: Right? STUDENT: Amen! 

BRANDON: So worldbuilding's important. Don't get  me wrong. You ideally want to do all three. But  

really great worldbuilding cannot save a sequence  where you have said, "Hey, people need to go to  

point B," and then you send them to point C,  because the whole time the readers will be  

thinking, "This is a side quest, and we are being  diverted from our story until we start heading  

toward point B where we'll be making progress  again. Because we are making no progress, I will  

not invest in this plot cycle because it doesn't  seem like it means anything." My solution was  

actually pretty easy. My solution was to have the  primary viewpoint protagonist of this, right near  

the beginning, be put in conflict with the rest  of the group because he's been told by a source  

that he believes that if he doesn't get to point  C, someone he loves will die. And he believes that  

so strongly, and he's the main character we're  seeing through the eyes of right here, at least  

one of them, that's suddenly it's a conflict. It's  like, "Oh, are we supposed to go to B or C? Oh! I  

think we need to get to C because the consequences  of not getting to C, if this character is right,  

are really, really, really dire." So even though  he's in conflict with them, it works. And suddenly  

that little change, and suddenly the whole plot  sequence worked. In the next group of readers,  

nobody had problems. Everybody was enjoying it.  All the things that I wanted to have happen and  

wanted to be enjoyed were enjoyed. Such little  changes in promises--you see, whoever asked do you  

want to make promises--I made another promise  in the middle of the story. Promise is, if you  

don't get here, something bad will happen. And  so he needs to get there. And so you can see how  

just a little divergence with really interesting  things can end up not working if you don't  

understand progress payoff. Most of the time, not  all the time, but most of the time if a book is  

boring or if people aren't investing in a sequence  that you thought they should invest in, you have  

made a misalignment of progress and promise. STUDENT: How consistent should we be  

with the pacing throughout the book? BRANDON: It depends on your own personal  

style. Question is how consistent should you  be on pacing. It really, really depends. Right?  

Generally, if you want to use thriller pacing,  which is you're going to write short chapters,  

you're going to try to put a hook at the end  of every one of them, or at least most of them.  

Dan Brown is pretty good at this. For all his  faults, he's really good at this. And that's  

part of what made The DaVinci Code work, is that  short chapters with a hook at the end of each one  

and a lot of external conflict can really propel  a story. But they run out, in my experience, right  

around 70,000 words. And if you're not going right  into the climax then, you start to lose people. So  

it works really great for a story that's 90,000  to 100,000 words long. Really hard to keep that  

up for too long because you generally in a book  want slowdowns in pacing for the reader to get  

a breather, for the characters to get a breather,  and for you to kind of come to, you know, process  

what's been discovered, so that then you can  ramp it back up. Because variation is noticeable,  

and lack of variation creates sort of a sense that  you're coasting along, and it starts to lose its  

impact. If every sentence is a one-sentence  zinger, then none of them. Right? What's that  

Syndrome said? If everyone has superpowers,  nobody does. Or something like that. Right?  

Yeah. If everyone's super, nobody is. Yeah. There  you are. Sorry, Brad Bird. I'm misquoting you. So  

there is an example of why you would want to do  both. Both if you can keep it up--. Like a lot of  

things that people are like, "This is an absolute  page turner," it's 80,000 to 100,000 words of just  

relentless plotting that you're supposed to read  in one sitting and not stop. I don't do that in  

Stormlight Archive. Right? I did it a little bit  in Wind and Truth, which is why the pacing feels  

different in Wind and Truth than it does in other  books. So it's really kind of up to you what you  

want to do with this. Generally, no, you don't  want the same pacing through a book. Generally,  

you want to change pacing and having breathers  and things like this. It's up to you. Some  

books are just really slow the whole time. And  that's just the author's writing style. Right? 

Yeah, excellent question. Go ahead. STUDENT: How do you deal with speeding  

up the progress when you want your characters  to get to a destination, but you don't want to,  

like, take time with the travel? BRANDON: Right. How do you speed  

up progress when you want to not have  to take time travelling? I would give  

a mini promise early in your book that sometimes  you're just going to time jump. And then just time  

jump. Just say, "And then they arrived." And you  can do this pretty easily. Like, if you're having  

problems with people being like, "Oh, it feels  like I missed too much," end part one and then  

start part two with them having arrived. Stuff  like this. Like, actual structural physicality  

breaks. Like, if you break a chapter and then say,  "Three weeks later," so much easier for a read4r  

than if you try to in the middle of a chapter say,  "and three weeks passed." That said, Jo Rowling  

does it all the time in Harry Potter. "And three  weeks passed, and it was Christmastime now." And  

so I don't think you have to worry about this  as much as you think you do. As long as you've  

kind of established early on that you're going to,  you know, like if you even have one chapter that  

says--at the end of chapter 2 and then chapter  3 is like, "Three days later X," you've already  

established this is a pattern. And nobody should  ever have a problem with, you know--sometimes  

you even do it right at the end of a chapter.  You're like, "Over the next three days she kept  

worrying that something was going to happen.  But at last they crested the hill and saw--"  

boom. And you've done it in a paragraph. So yeah. Back here, and then we'll do some of you up here. 

STUDENT: So you said that proper pacing,  proper progress, and signposting. 

BRANDON: Yeah. STUDENT: But you also warned against not making  

promises [unclear]. BRANDON: Yeah. 

STUDENT: I guess is the key to a  good plot twist proper signposting? 

BRANDON: So we'll talk about plot twists in payoff  in a second. But yes, that's part of it. The  

real good thing--the secret to proper twists is  generally to promise someone something, and then  

make them wish you'd promised something else. All  right? So to explain this--we'll do some others,  

but to explain this since the question is here.  I imagine twists working like you have promised  

someone a gift for Christmas, and you say, "Do you  like toy cars? I'm going to get you a toy car."  

And then you put a package under the Christmas  tree. And the twist is what do they actually open.  

Yeah. Plenty of stories give you a toy car,  and there is nothing wrong with that. Right?  

One of the greatest books of all time  is Pride and Prejudice. What is the  

first line of Pride and Prejudice? STUDENTS: "It is a truth universally  

acknowledge that any single man in possession  of a fortune must be in want of a wife." 

BRANDON: Yeah. CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: First line is this is a book about  someone getting married. Right? And then,  

"Oh, twist!" Nope, there's no  twist. They get married. Right? 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: There's complications  

and escalations, which are different  from twists and equally important,  

in fact even more important. You do not have  to have a twist. However, if you want a twist,  

as was guessed earlier here, one of the things you  can do is you can escalate. You can over-deliver.  

You promised a toy car. You give them a real car.  Right? But one of the classic twists is you say,  

"I'm going to get you a toy car." They're like,  "Yay!" And then through the course of the story  

you show them how cool planes are. CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: To the point that they're like, "I  know I'm going to get a toy car, but boy,  

I wish I was getting a toy plane." And then you  give them a toy plane. I usually use as an example  

the movie While You Were Sleeping. I'm going  to spoil While You Were Sleeping. I'm sorry. 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: OK? Yeah, it's a fantastic film  

that uses twists perfectly in this sort of style.  It's a romance. Woman is, like, dreaming, seeing  

this guy pass through her toll booth, because  she works at, like, a toll booth on the freeway,  

and thinking, "That's the guy someday I'd like to  marry." And she, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."  

And then, like, he gets in a car wreck, and she's  there, and she, like, helps him, and he wakes up,  

and she tells a lie because she's like, "Oh, I'm  his girlfriend," but not really meaning to tell  

that lie. She just was, you know, dreaming it,  or "I'm his fiancé. And then everyone's like, "He  

had a secret fiancé! Oh no!" She's like, "Oh no!  Now everyone thinks I'm his fiancé. I don't want  

to let them down." Hijinks ensue. So this story  is about "Oh, I'm pretending to be his fiancé,"  

because he's lost his memory and things like this,  or he's in a coma and he's like--whatever. Right?  

In the meantime, while he's in a coma/wakes up  and has lost his memory, because there's your  

escalation. Right? Rather than a twist it's  an escalation. What's going to happen when  

he wakes up and the lie becomes revealed? Oh,  he doesn't remember. "I had a fiancé? Oh, wow,  

she's pretty. Oh, that's good." Right? CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: "I'm glad my secret  fiancé is Sandra Bullock." 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Right? In the meantime, through the  

whole time, this is not uncommon, right? I think  The Wedding Singer does the same thing. She's been  

hanging out with his brother and falling in love  with his brother. That's the airplane. Right? You  

find out they match each other really well and  she doesn't actually match this other guy at  

all. Even though you were promised a toy car in  scene one you, through the course of the film,  

really come to want a toy plane. And then of  course the ending is she ends up with the plane,  

with the brother. Right? CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: Right? The hijinks continue to ensue  until they go to comical and ridiculous--. Well,  

they start at comical and ridiculous proportions.  They go further than that. And then boom,  

the wrap up. And the twist is you get your plane.  It's pretty well sign posted that you're getting  

your plane. But there are plenty of books that do  this more subtly. Not that While You Were Sleeping  

is bad for not doing it subtly. It's a really  excellent story. But you can do that more subtly  

so that the twist is, "Oh, wow. This is what I  always wanted." And this is actually the secret to  

why Into the Woods works. Because Into the Woods  shows you idyllic fairytales in the beginning,  

and then starts to put cracks in them, so that  you start to not necessarily want the fairytale  

ending. And then boom! Second act happens and  everything gets smashed to splinterings, but then  

it's rebuilt as something better, so that it ends  up working. It's a really gutsy move. And a lot  

of people really dislike Into the Woods for that  reason. Like, my mom does not like Into the Woods.  

She's just like, "Give me a fairytale. That's  what you promised. You lied to me, Sondheim!" 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: "I'm never watching any of your  

plays again! Mostly because they're about people  eating other people or assassinating people." And  

then there's West Side Story. But-- CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: She'll watch that one. Sorry. Does that  make sense? How much time have we got? We've  

got five minutes. OK. All right. We've got to do  promises. Write your questions in here. Let's just  

to payoffs for a little bit. I've already done the  most important one, which is what do you do with  

twists, right? But payoffs are really just giving  people a surprising yet inevitable fulfilment of  

your promises. You make it surprising through  a couple of ways. One is the twist. But usually  

what you do to make it surprising is you give them  plausible deniability. You make them believe that  

it won't happen. And most stories get a lot of  mileage out of this. Right? Like, a ton of mileage  

out of making the story work so well that you  worry, you wonder if the character--. You're like,  

"Oh, is the character actually going to succeed?"  You know, we're pretty sure that Frodo is going to  

succeed and that the world is not going to end.  But then when he gets stung by Shelob and dies,  

you're like, "Wait!" CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: "Wait. Maybe Frodo won't. Maybe Sam  will have to do this all by himself. That's  

horrifying!" Right? Escalation. And then we get  Frodo back. But then Frodo collapses. Then Sam  

has to carry him. Right? Like, things like  this, like you keep getting these obstacles,  

escalations. And through obstacles, escalations,  and the last one being red herrings, you manage  

to make people think that they aren't going to  get what you promised them, then you do anyway.  

That is your basic. That's what you generally do.  The twist works really well also. Sometimes your  

surprising but inevitable is built around this  idea that as you're going through your story  

you forget the promise. Right? My favorite of  the Lord of the Rings films is the second film  

where the promise is right at the end, "Look for  me on the morning of the fifth day." Right? And  

this is a beautiful sequence. And this will kind  of be where I'll wrap up. I love the second movie,  

and I like the third movie. I like the Frodo/Sam  part. But the Battle of Helm's Deep versus the  

Minas Tirith battle, they work on very different  axes and it's all about promises. Right? In the  

Minas Tirith battle in the third film, but it  plays out slightly differently in the books,  

so I use the films because they make a better  object lesson. And this is in the third film,  

Minas Tirith, they're up against all odds. They  are going to be destroyed. And the promise is if  

they don't, you know, fight this off themselves,  they will fail. This is their last resort. And  

then they fight and they're really strong, and  they can't do it, and then Aragorn shows up and  

saves them. In the second film, it's the same  thing. They're in this bastion. It's their last  

resort. If they don't win this, they're all  going to die. And then Gandalf shows up and  

saves them. The difference in these plot cycles  is promises. In the second film Gandalf says,  

"Look for me on the morning of the fifth day." And  Peter Jackson very expertly uses--what's it--it's  

what's his name. Is it Eomer? Yeah. No. Yeah, it's  Eomer. Eomer. I was going to say Faramir. It's  

not Faramir. It's Eomer. And I was going to say,  "Oh, it's Bones." But it's not Bones, it's Eomer,  

because he's in a different movie. CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: But he very expertly has them leave.  It doesn't work this way in the books. But he  

expertly has them leave so you have hanging on  the mantle there this idea of "Oh, there's an army  

out there that was faithful to the king until the  king pushed them too far and left." And you have  

Gandalf saying, "Look for me on the morning of the  fifth day." I still wish it were the third day,  

for mythological reasons. Right? CLASS: (laughing) 

BRANDON: Right? Morning of the third day,  the sunrise. Anyway. But it's the morning  

of the fifth day. I went and looked. I'm like,  "Ah, you missed out. Could have been third." 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Anyway. Through  

the course of how awful that fighting is, awful  in a good way, and how dark everything gets,  

you forget, like, Aragorn, and Gimli, and  Legolas forget that Gandalf has promised  

because it's so dark and they're at their last  stand, and they're going out to die. And then  

Gandalf shows up. And it's just brilliant, and  wonderful, and you love it. Because you remember,  

and they give a voice stinger, "Remember?" If  you can do that you don't need a twist. You can  

just make us forget by making it so dark that  when the light comes back and the sun shines,  

and orcs are like, "Oh, we can't see, because  Gandalf might have magic. We're not sure." 

CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: And they get ridden down,  

and they're saved. You're like, cheering. Whereas  when Aragorn shows up with the ghosts, I don't  

know if you guys had that, I'm like, "Oh, good.  The ghosts are there. I'm glad they didn't die."  

But I'm not cheering. Right? Ghosts did all the  work. They should have just--everyone should have  

hid and waited for the ghosts. And in the second  one, you're like, "Ah!" They had to fight every  

inch of the ground they gave up so that they could  last long for Gandalph to show up. And that's what  

promise, progress, and payoff mean, is making  this work so that you have--when these work,  

people cheer. People get chills. The story just  is magical for a minute when this works. And  

when it doesn't, well, you have other things that  can carry your story. But I really like this in  

plotting, and so that's why I talk about it. Next  week, we'll talk about actual plot frameworks and  

strategies. Thank you guys so much. CLASS: (applause)