News – updates on books, events, appearances, etc.

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    The 3 Things You Must Learn to Write Killer Stories: Feb 20 @ BYU

    ByJohn Brown

    Mark your calendars!!

    The free, 2009 Life, the Universe, and Everything symposium at BYU will run Thursday – Saturday, February 19 – 21.

    The speical guests are Tracy & Laura Hickman (Dragonlance authors) and James C. Christensen (yes, the amazing fantasy artist). But there will be more than a dozen other authors there, including: L.E. Modesitt, Brandon Mull, James Dashner, Brandon Sanderson, David Farland, Mette Ivie Harrison, Eric James Stone, Howard Tayler, and a number of others.
     
    Here’s what I’ll be doing:

    1. Panel: The Principles of Suspense. Fri, Feb 20, 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
    2. Workshop: The 3 Things You Must Learn to Write Killer Stories. Fri, Feb 20, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
    3. Panel: Myth and Mythology in SF&F. Sat, Feb 21, 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
    4. Reading: from the forthcoming novel and a few of my other published works, Sat, Feb 21, 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM

    If you want to write fiction, you’ll want to attend the workshop. And if you’ve attended the workshop before, know that I’ve made some significant updates to the workshop content for 2009. I’m always learning, and so each time I teach this I’m able to provide more insight.

    You’ll also want to carefully review the whole schedule. There are tons of panels with professional authors on them that are going to be both useful and interesting to writers.

    My workshop focuses on three incredibly important things.  In the beginning, I didn’t know these key things, and that ignorance stymied all my writing efforts for years. Once I learned them, the way was opened. There was still a lot of work involved. But these principles increased my output of quality material 1000% (literally). The principles allowed me to write the story that got me my current three-book contract from Tor.

    I’ve taught it now more than a dozen times to all sorts of fiction writers and they’re telling me they’re finding it very useful. You’re going to love this stuff, and I always enjoy sharing what I’ve learned with other writers. The three things are:

    1. What a story really is. We’re not talking narrative taxonomy, although that’s included. It’s focused on the story effect upon the reader. And why this is one of the most important things you need to understand when writing fiction.
    2. Parts & principles. Key principles of character, problem, plot, setting, and text as they relate to #1.
    3. The creative process. The simple but powerful principles of how to get ideas. How to develop them into story. Why writer’s block is a gift and how to use it to produce MORE. Plus a number of other creative principles I wished I’d known.

    It’s a highly interactive workshop. Again, the whole symposium, including the workshop, is free. I don’t know another place where you can learn from so many professionals for such a great price.

    Hope to see you there!!

  • Advance Praise for Servant of a Dark God

    ByJohn Brown

    My editor just emailed me another endorsement from one of the folks we sent the manuscript to. I’m so excited! This one’s from Kage Baker.

    I’m a total stranger to three of the four that have responded so far. It continually amazes me how generous the pros in this genre are with both their time and praise.

    Here’s the last one.

    “A classic heroic saga, dealing with the bedrock issues of good and evil and identity. These are classic themes because they matter; and Brown makes them matter both to his young protagonist and the reader. It promises to continue for quite a distance, and I hope it does.”

    —Kage Baker, author of House of the Stag and The Company series.

    Here are the previous ones.

    “Thoroughly engrossing from the first page to the last! John Brown shows himself to be a writer with remarkable depth and power. I haven’t seen a debut novel this good in years!”

    —David Farland, New York Times best-selling author of Runelords and Ravenspell series

    “In Servant of a Dark God, John Brown has created a complex and intricate world, filled with all the permutations of human good and evil, as well as evil that goes beyond the human, where neither heroes nor villains are quite what they seem at first, and where the cost of virtue is high indeed, yet where, in the end, the tenacity of such virtue is what is required to triumph.”

    —L. E. Modesitt, Jr., award-winning author of the Recluce Saga

    “A complex, powerful story of a youth trying to learn who he is and what he is, with no allies he can trust in a world stalked by a monster. A book that copies nothing I have read before and which goes its own way brilliantly.”

    —David Drake, author of the popular Hammer’s Slammers and Lord of Isles series

    Wow. I think I want to read this book!

  • SODG Story Edits Finished

    ByJohn Brown

    Click to see edits

    Wahooooooo!

    I just turned in my final story edits to Stacy and David. The due date was November 1. The 3rd actually. The book clocks in around 177,000 words.

    Wow. This last set of story edits led to some great changes. Not huge ones, but nice touches. I had to rewrite part of this battle scene, and man, oh, man I’m totally geeking out about it. We’ll see how it plays with readers.

    What’s been interesting is seeing the types of things Stacy and David have commented on in the text. It’s as if they went through asking simple logic questions. Did they have enough time actually to do this? It makes no sense that person y wasn’t there. This thing isn’t fully explained.

    And sure enough, the logic gaps were there.

    So it wasn’t the interest level of the story they seemed to be editing for as much as the details that lead to clarity and belief. Of course, that those two things must be present for the interest to come. And this is not to say they didn’t focus on parts where interest flagged. There was one comment that forced me to cut my favorite dawg scene, a whole chapter’s worth. But the bulk of the comments were focused on the “logic” of the story.

    Anyway, as of next Monday I think I’m officially into production. And back to book 2, which I’m 25,000 words into.