Cyrus

Lecture 05 Worldbuilding Part One

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Lecture 05: Worldbuilding Part One

He made a mistake at the end of Mistborn 1: Vin used the mists to defeat the lord rule like 90% of the way into the book which made the ending less satisfying as people didn’t know about this already.

Sanderson’s Laws

LAW 1: Your ability to solve problems with magic in a satisfying way is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic

  • don’t use Deus Ex Machina

LAW 2: Flaws/limitations/costs are more interesting than powers

  • Allomancy costs metals, metal pushing is more interesting than just being able to fly whenever you want
  • Superman has kryptonite as a weakness, his powers can’t make people fall in love with him
  • Gollum is in LOTR to see what the cost of the ring is
  • three main conflicts:
    • not powerful enough yet
    • power is not working now
    • magic is not relevant to problem
  • flaw vs limitation
    • flaws can be worked toward a solution, ie, Vn doesn’t trust people, learns to trust so she can love Elend
    • limitations are innate and cannot be changed, work with them rather than against them, ie can only push and pull metals directly away from you, a person born with only one arm

LAW 3: Before adding something new to your magic (setting) see if you can instead expand what you have

  • a book with 30 magic systems barely expalained will be less interesting than 3 systems deeply explained

ZEROTH LAW: Always err on the side of what is awesome

magic scale

problem solving (magic as science) |———————————————————| sense of wonder

Hard magic |—————————————————————————————| Soft magic

lord of the rings (uses both)

  • uses hard magic with the Ring
    • turns you invisible
    • expands your lifespan
    • Sauron sees you
    • you turn into Gollum
  • uses soft magic with Gandalf
    • know that Gandalf can do crazy things not sure what
    • fights Balrog off screen
    • no idea how he died and was resurrected
  • Tolkien tried to write a classic epic but with a normal person as the hero, Gandalf is there to make the hobbits look small (metaphorically and literally)

Name of the Wind (I should read this)

  • uses both systems

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