Right About Dragons

Some of the 'kids' over at Reading Excuses (self included, not as a kid, of course!) are about to embark on a collaborative trawl through Brandon Sanderson's writing course. His 2013 lecture series at Brigham Young University is available online at Write About Dragons (http://www.writeaboutdragons.com/), it's fifteen lectures long, but we're not in a hurry (which is smart) and are planning to take from Monday to October to complete the course.

There are eight of us and we'll be writing a 30,000 word novella over the 15 weeks, circulating 1,000 to 2,000 word submission each week and critiquing the other submissions. There's a good buzz in the group already, as evidenced by the thread over at Reading Excuses (http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/13073-sandersons-write-about-dragons-creative-writing-course/), and some interesting ideas coming out of the melting pot. A prequel to Mandamon's 'Seeds of Dissolution' won't mean anything to you perhaps, but having alpha (beta?) read the first novel, I'm looking forward to that almost as much as writing my piece.

Currently titled "Waifs and Strays", my aim is to write a story that subverts some of the well-worn fantasy tropes that we're probably all getting a bit tired of, and in particular some of the tick-box character stereotypes that are still lurking in Cliche Corner even now. That said, subverting things is a bit of a trope in itself these days, but that's what I'm going for, so sue me. (Please, don't sue me).

As well as trying to learn from Mr. Sanderson's excellent course (I've started on Lecture 1 before Monday's deadline, cheater!), I'm also hoping to incorporate some of the Writing Prompts from the Writing Excuses podcast along the way (birds and stone, etc.). One that I've tackled already is from Season 5, Episode 22 "Come up with an eight-word tag line for your novel or short story. It needs to be pithy, punchy, memorable and easily comprehensible." My offering is the following:

 - The greatest threat to success is their friends -

Out of Excuses

I plan to start posting about writing on this blog, but first, some context.

I have long been an aspiring writer of fantasy. I suppose it comes from being an avid reader from a relatively early age, from a first introduction to J.R.R. Tolkien and Larry Niven (God bless you, Dad) - and from always having had an urge to create (thank you, Mum). I had dabbled with writing, written short stories and the first novel in a trilogy. That took the best part of 15 years (on and off, of course!!) - it's now 225,000 words and not fit for publication. How do I know that? Because about 3 years ago I discovered the excellent Writing Excuses podcast.

I am a long time fan of Robert Jordan and his excellent Wheel of Time series. With the sad passing of Mr. Jordan, some bloke called Brandon Sanderson was brought in to write the last book from Mr. Jordan's notes. Well, one book became three, but it was clear straight away on reading The Gathering Storm, that this Sanderson fellow warranted further investigation. Having read his Mistborn books and started on the other Cosmere series, I am now an big fan, and it was a short step from Brandon's website to Writing Excuses (WE), the excellent and deservedly award-winning podcast for aspiring writers by Sanderson and his friends Dan Wells (horror writer); Howard Tayler (cartoonist and now published author) and Hugo Award winning ;o) Mary Robinette Kowal (author and puppeteer).

Writing Excuses is a hugely useful, entertaining and educational weekly podcast, now in its ninth season, which exposes listeners to the sage advice and wealth of experience of the casters, but also to the limitless expertise of their guests, who appear from time to time to discuss specialist subjects, as it were. I cannot began to relate how much I have learned about writing from this quite rightly lauded podcast. That learning alone is worth its weight in gold, but I have