Let's Talk About Trunk Novels - Ep. 79 of Intentionally Blank
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- Опубліковано 6 гру 2022
- Brandon and Dan reminisce about their “bad ol’ days” of writing. Their transition from bad to mediocre to published and the trunk novels they left along the way.
Check out our previous episode of Intentionally Blank
In Defense of Rings of Power... Kinda: • In Defense of Rings of...
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Can be listened to almost everywhere podcasts can be found.
Produced by Adam Horne
Sound engineering and editing by Daniel Thompson - Розваги
I love that Dan just throws out, "we are haunted" at 31:08 with ZERO context for people who weren't at the live recording. For those curious, the staff wanted to expand the seating for the stage area where they were recording, so they needed us out of the hall by 6:30, and Dan made up the gag that the hall was haunted so we couldn't stay too long. It's delightful that it made its way into the episode.
Thank you for this lmao 😂
Mistborn Prime sounds interesting..."he leaves the city where everyone is mean and goes to the country where everyone is nice." Sounds like every Hallmark movie I've seen.
Made me think of She-Ra
I was at con and really wanted to add to Brandon's bad story idea: Have all the stories told side by side (unknown to the audience), with characters relating/talking about a serial killer on the loose, with skilled foreshadowing that these are sequential stories, then at the end, it reveals scenes of all the people meeting the serial killer, and you realize they were sequential stories the whole time
Eh. That would kill the pacing. Probably.
Give it a try!
Hoodwinked?
Yes, and... what if all the scenes were actually encounters between this person and the killer? They could have different descriptions - e.g to a short person the killer appears taller, to an upper class person his accent seems rougher. Then they all end with the killer offering them a ride
My take on the idea is that we first open on the crime scene, see all of the bodies, and watch the killer stumble away.
Then, we go back to get to know the characters.
Then, we love them.
Then, we get excited as they meet each other.
Then, we begin to see aspects of the first scene, a cup in place of shattered glass, a necklace given by one newfound friend to another in place of a twisted chain held in the grip of a cold fist, and all of them posing for a picture in place of a blood speckled photograph.
Then, there's a knock at the door and one of the characters cheerfully runs to and, smiling happily, answers it to find Dan. He grins back.
That bad story idea is pretty good since they all are victims of the same killer you can look for similarities between them and create a profile for the killer. It turns you into the investigator. Sounds fun.
Right?! I genuinely want someone to write that.
35:05 This sounds like a bad story idea in itself. "A writer forgets his fourth trunk novel, and must go on a journey of self-discovery to rediscover his past and figure out what the dang fourth book was."
"Let me introduce you to Brandon Sanderson." "If you leave me alone I WILL write."
Expo vs con.
Expo: an event where you show off new stuff to fans.
Con: an event where fans show off new stuff to other fans, and sometimes you're there.
"There's nothing more exhilirating than reading a book that's terrible by an author that you love" rings very true, I think Thomas Pynchon released Slow Reader for that exact purpose. Seeing his early short stories and comparing them to where he ended up gives hope to the hopeless.
Was confused reading the title, thought they had already done an episode on this. Then I realized I was at Dragonsteel expo this year
The bad story idea does exist, kinda. The nonfiction book The Five by Hallie Rubenhold is the lives of the five canonical Jack the Ripper victims. She doesn’t even talk about the murders or Jack. Great book!
I went to the comment section to say the same thing! Such a refreshing view of the story
Yep! I came here to make sure this book was mentioned. Very interesting for its examination of everyday Victorian life. :D
Moment of appreciation for Moshe, who spared us from Dan and Brandon writing a bad Da Vinci Code parody and delivered such a magnificently hilarious dose of reality and perspective to a couple of promising new authors.
I love that Brandon and Dan's bad stories are still way better than any story I have ever come up with.
This podcast was one of the events I made sure to attend at Dragonsteel 2022.
What did people who passed up on this choose instead. I’m hard pressed to think there was anything better than watching them speak at their own event. Like what was happening at the time of the podcast event?
@@Osyrous No one passed it up, but if it hit capacity you had to select from the back up offers. People were lining up for the popular events roughly 1 event in advance. Some people would join events in the same rooms to be ready for the next event, but sometimes they kicked them out. Brandon's gotten way more popular since "21 Dragonsteel lol
This should be required watching for every aspiring author. Especially since every trunk novel is a lesson. (Mine are so bad).
My trunk just keeps getting fuller and fuller. It was good to hear Brandon mention how much he took from the trunk novels and used elsewhere though. So much of my writing has a scene here or a bit of dialog there that I love, but the overall is just so... Bad. Lol. To anyone else out there with the Trunk of Holding, keep at it. One day it all might just come together!
The story about characters which are murdered by the same serial killer was written by Lord Grimdark himself, Joe Abercrombie. In his book “Sharp Edges” there is a part about little characters which accidentally died in book “Better Served Cold”.
RIP Robert Asprin what a great comedian and storyteller. the Myth-adventure series is wonderful
Bad story idea: Dan tries to figure out the title of his 4th book, but at each step of the research he just finds deeper and deeper mysteries.
At the beginning when they were discussing the etymology for the term "trunk novels", in the few seconds between the definition and the explanation, I thought it would come from tree trunks. Like, the novel is a whole tree, but when it doesn't find a buyer you just cut off the limbs and the roots, and then regrow/recreate them differently around the trunk. You keep some of the core ideas, but rewrite part of the plot, the tone, the characterization. It ends up looking completely different since you just regrew an entire new foliage but the core, the defining idea(s) that gave you motivation to write the novel in the first place are still present.
I kind of like my etymology better 😁
Shining Girls, the Novel that the apple TV show is based on, does an amazing job of giving more weight to the victims than the criminal.
The bad story idea reminds me of the book "Many Lives" by Kukrit Pramoj. Not a spoiler, cause it's the main premise, but the intro talks about a river ferry that sinks during a night storm and all the passengers die. Each chapter then explores in detail the lives of the people that drowned. Not horror, but the people experience, and do, some tragic things until getting to their watery grave. I 100% recommend but only for adults.
Seriously, thanks so much for doing these. You guys are not only an inspiration but also you make my work days a little bit better each time I see something new for y'all. : 3
3:30 you could feature a recurring newspaper by all characters reading about the previous murder
You know what stops me from writing the most next to getting analysis paralysis about the plot? It's knowing that I have to write like 3 books before I can even publish something so I don't want those to be my main passion project. So I try to think of something else to write about that care a little less about so that they can be the trunk novels but not my "baby" that I know will be great. However, because I don't care about them as much, I am less interested in starting them. So weird, right? This video just clarified that for me.
Kickstarter for the da Vinci code parody incoming
Me, no idea what a trunk novel is: *fascinating, why don’t we spend 35 mins on this*
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper
Book by Hallie Rubenhold
It was actually a great book
That series on the serial killer is sooo up Dan's tree
Brandon's ending for Knightlife happens in Life of Brian which came out in '79
Best things Brandon does is this podcast ...outside creating fantasy.
It feels like Brandon is entering a stage of fame few authors get. I love what he does and the way he does it. He's built a good publishing and media team too and feels more like a family than a biz.
I wish he'd stop referring to himself in third person because he's not as self centered as that comes off. He kind of talks in constant hypotheticals, and that tends to lend itself to using that type of phrasing, but it still grates on an audience.
I've listened to all of his podcasts, even all of Writing Excuses. I've literally never noticed him doing this.
@@MeemBeen he does it a lot...I love what he does. The only reason I mention it is because in his 60 minutes or whatever big-time network interview he gave awhile back he did it a few times and I thought if I had never heard of this guy it would turn me off from his work. I think he'd best fantasy writer and probably best overall human in America.
This is probably the most interesting "bad story idea" until now on the podcast. It sounds really intriguing. I would absolutely read that novel.
Dan can be surprisingly funny. He's actually got presence. I like him.
Love these podcasts ❤️
I read Bored of the Rings (by National Lampoon, yes the Animal House guys) as a child after Lord of the Rings and it had some pretty racy stuff in it that I am sure my mom would not have liked me reading, lol. I lent it to my D&D buddies and it had some influence on our early games and characters which were quite silly and NSFW.
The first person to say Adonalism gets sent to Azkaban XD
A parody was published by Adam Roberts called "The Va Dinci Cod".
Regarding an anthology of serial killer victims, something similar was published by Lauren Beukes, "The Shining Girls". It's a novel, but individual chapters introduce you to the lives of interesting female characters, only for them to be murdered at the end and not return in future chapters
14:00 Aha, yes. That's a sentiment I've held for a long time. If drama fails to be dramatic, it might be an accidental comedy instead, so it could still be enjoyable. The reverse is not true. If comedy fails to be funny, you've got nothing.
If they were to write Brandon story idea he could make his interludes be the spirits of the murdered people talking among themselves about what happened.
Dan was really funny this episode
Fight the good fight on "Dragonsteel X" Brandon! Though I'd recommend "DSX" over "DraX" or whatever it wax. :D
Though I would also add that I would much prefer "Dragonsteel Con [20XX]" over simply "Dragonsteel [20XX]". That naming has cause sooooo many funky conversations this year. Doesn't help that we have Dragonsteel (the company), Dragonsteel (the unpublished book series), Dragonsteel Prime (not to be confused with Dragonsteel the unpublished book series), dragonsteel (the fictional substance)... Am I missing one? I feel like there's got to be at least one more. XD
Hey guys, I was wondering if you could do a video on AI art? I know you’re both writers as opposed to visual mediums, but AI seems to just be getting better and better and creating more and more types of art. As a rookie artist (I write and draw) it’s really discouraging, you know?
with dragponsteel con, you can have DraCon
You get me. Exactly what I was thinking!
Woah it's been a minute since I checked the podcast and the audience scared me outta my skin
Honestly, A Night of Blacker Darkness was the funniest book I have read since Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I will have to check out the playscript version
I can't find the play script version anywhere; if you find it, could you put it here?
i feel like you guys need to make one of those writing journals with story prompts called trunk novels :D
Was Life of Brian out before or after the gladiator book Brandon talked about, because it had a scene where the gladiator chased a guy until he had a heart attack.
I'm a bit confused. Brandon does actually write some pretty dark stuff. Kaladin has contemplated suicide on multiple occasions, Shallon has murdered both her parents, and Dalinar has arguably committed genocide (at least mass killing of civilians). I would say Brandon is roughly as dark as George Martin. Maybe not quite as dark because George is more likely to include sexual violence, but Brandon has had sexual violence strongly implied particularly in Mistborn.
Also, while I often hear that many people think that all of George's characters are really dark and gritty, I honestly have to disagree. Jon's a decent guy, Arya was a really sweet kid (at least in the first 3 books), Meera and Jojen both are genuinely good people. There's a lot of good guys in the series. While some of then have tragic fates, is it really that much worse than you can expect in war?
This is coming from a guy who has read both Stormlight (and several other Brandon novels) and ASOIAF and really love both. I just don't see one as being darker than the other. Perhaps there is something I am missing.
Grim dark doesn’t mean dark stuff happens, it means that the story as a whole doesn’t reward traditionally moral and good acts. So Game of Thrones is grim dark because the moral good character is punished for his goodness by the world as a whole. The plot punishes morally good decisions and often rewards the evil deeds if they are smarter.
Brandon has dark stuff happen in books but his characters triumph by choosing the moral good, the world and plot punishes the morally bad. So his books are never grim dark in sub-genre. The underlying emotion to his books is hope. The underlying emotion in grim dark is often despair.
@@Arezoo298195 OK, that makes sense. Thank you.
@@andrewredden9563 I’ve been thinking about it and I think Well of Ascension does qualify as grim dark. It actively punishes Vin for her good intentions. But the series as a whole is not.
@@Arezoo298195 Some thoughts on this. Good intentions don't always equal good results. I think it's a Japanese proverb that says Wisdom and Virtue are as the two wheels of a cart. I think we've all meet someone who has really good intentions, is really compassionate, but tends to make the situation worse by trying to help. I've been that person multiple times. But that doesn't mean the situation is hopeless, only difficult.
As for Vin specifically, it's important to note that she is far from a perfect person. At the point of Well of Ascension, she is capable of love for those she is associated with, but can struggle with compassion for strangers if I recall correctly. I'm not suggesting she completely lacked compassion, but her love for her friends and husband often trumped he compassion for strangers. An understandable flaw. Another flaw that she had was being somewhat short sighted and not being able to see the larger picture.
To say it simply, I think Vin was more being punished for her vices than her virtues.
Though, I think we can say the same for ASOIAF. Often characters fail at there goal because they fail to judge the situation accurately. Ned would likely have succeeded in supplanting Cersi if he hadn't trusted Peter. I suppose being too trusting can be a vice.
Now viewing ASOIAF through the lense of hope, I think there's more than people give it credit for. See, the most depressing thing is ASOIAF (in my opinion) is when characters loose there identity. This happens a lot in this series; Arya becomes no one as the house of black and white try to turn her into a remorseless killer, Bran's identity is taken as the Children of the forest try to turn him into the Three Eyed Raven, Catelyn turns into Stoneheart, we can expect similar treatment for Jon, Theron becomes Reek, and these are only a few (and in my opinion the best) examples. What I am trying to say is that I think that one of the worst things is for someone to loose their identity, loose what makes them them. But the hope comes when we consider the Unsullied. The Unsullied have been striped from personhood and identity since children, but we see them becoming more human as the story goes on. Grey Worm even expresses respect and affection for Dany, something he's not supposed to be capable of anymore. And then there is Theon to consider who defied Ramsey and is regaining his humanity. He's not the old Theon who was a narcissistic murder and traitor, but seems to be rising to be a better Theon. So I think there is more hope than most people give it credit for, at least in this department.
@@Arezoo298195 Now I have even more thoughts! They just keep multiplying. I think one reason for why ASOIAF is considered so dark might have a lot to do with characters failing in their stated objectives. Really, if you think about all the times characters can have a plan to do something and then completely fail at that, it really happens all the time. And so this can lead to a sense of hopelessness as everything a character does just fails.
Where with most other stories, the characters end up succeeding. It might cost them, but it is a success. In mistborn (spoilers) the main characters try to overthrow the lord ruler, and succeed. A lot of people die, but they succeed. In Stormlight, there is some failure, Kaladin failed to protect certain people, Dalinar fails to make peace with the Pandashii, Jasnah fails to convince everyone of the danger they were in, ect. But they also have levels of success. Dalinar does unite the other highprinces, Kaladin does thwart many assassination attempts, and Lift manages to steal food (because that's the most important thing).
In all seriousness, I think that Stormlight and Mistborn are considered a bit less dark because there's a bit less in terms of failure. Where in ASOIAF it's pretty rare. It does happen, Dany does take Mareen, Tyrion does successfully defend Kinds landing, but I think failure outways success in that series.
I like the new thumbnail photo, are you guys going to slowly incrementally turn around over the years?
Best comment
Oh, I have seen those first 2 minutes already
21:34 Yes it is bad news. I want the were-frog version! Well, I guess that just means that were-frog is up for grabs for my next project....
I like this bad story idea. You could add an element where the reader can perhaps start to see a far fetch connection between the victims. Slowing gaining an understanding of why or who is killing off these people. Could be a very cool story.
I definitely have the Myth Adventures omnibus on my shelf. 😅
Stars End reminds me so strongly of Outer Wilds it's insane. I recognize it's not a unique story idea but funny
A night of blacker darkness is excellent 👍
I really wish someone would tell Brandon that he doesn't understand Game of Thrones. I think he's admitted to not having read it. Joe Abercrombie is nothing like George RR Martin.
Wanted to provide input that the audio at the convention in this hall was literally hurting my ears while i was there. I put in my earbuds to deafen the noise
Question for next stream: Wayne told Wax he once met a horse with perfect pitch. Grasping at straws here but is this TenSoon as a horse worldhopper who acquired enough Breaths and/or learned some Rhythms??
Dan would add a necromancer calling up and enslaving the souls of the murder victims. And the fuel for the system would be the screams of the victims reexperiencing their deaths over and over..
I still hope to meet Brandon and get an autograph
Release knightlife I must have it!
Agreed. Brandon says it's awful, but everything I've heard about it sounds amazing.
The Berry God, the father of MINT BERRY CRUNCH!
Let's go!
13:40 This story was an amazing song by Starbomb! Probably not a very good fleshed out story though....
The carrot and the stick!
In Czech we have something similar to trunk novels. We call it the drawer novels. It has mostly to do with communistic censorship and people being unable to publish, but the reason for not publishing could vary. So Dan was basically right.
I wanna read that anti-grimdark Sanderson novel 🥰
Grimdark might be a little too difficulty to write, not on a technical level or anything like that, but motivation wise. Characters can want what they want, but a situation that is impossibly dark all the time, may potentially give the protagonist burn-out. Which might be interesting if you wanted to swerve people and turn it into a slice of life grimdark, but that turns it into a meta comedy of, "how F'd up can today go?" "Oh wow, it CAN get worst"
I doubt it is a good idea to try to wholesale copy the style of other writers. Although if there is anything to copy from Joe, it would be his character's distinct speech patterns that allow him to drop the "he/she said" after each line. When recently reading Lost Metal I was actually wondering why "he/she said" was included so often in conversations between Wax, Wayne and Marisi, when it was so obvious in dialouge who was who.
Did the carrot end up in steel heart?
Dragonsteel convention - DRACO
I'm here to kick ass and eat carrots, and I'm all out of carrots.
Dragon steel convention can be “draco”
Dan is correct. I was so disappointed with Harper Lee's second book (the one she wrote before writing To Kill a Mockingbird)
Are talking about "Go Set a Watchman"?
@@GabetheGuru. Yes. And I realize Harer Lee may not have been cognizant enough to agree to letting the book be released.
@@andrewberenson5717 I haven't read Go Set a Watchman, as I only recently finished To Kill a Mockingbird. I've heard theories about how it's possible that Harper Lee didn't actually write Go Set a Watchman.
I want a were-frog book
Surely Dragonsteel Convention makes "DraCo"
Oh seven save me, i thought this ep was about DBZ fanfiction ...
Did Brandon read any warhammer novels?
Please watch andor?
DraStEx!
Can bad fanfiction that barely gets reviews count as trunk novel?
Hello
Nice to see the Joe Abercrombie love
So The Sunlit Man is basically Mistborn Prime's spiritual successor
DraCo
Adoooonalsium
*Sentences zenthepoet1319 to Azkaban*
@@Nasser851000 Wuh?
3:00 I’d read that story, heck I’ve read story before. Has anyone here read ‘The Boxer’ WEBTOON, or ‘The Hero Returns’
This entire video is bad book ideas
Dang another con episode. Not a fan of these, they lack the intimacy of a regular episode, so I'll be skipping this one. It is nice that yall are still able to make an episode for the people that don't mind.
I'm one that doesn't mind, unless the audio quality is bad enough. But to each their own.
fwurst
I put Rhythms of Bore and Yawnshard in the trunk largely unread.
Here he is! Every video lol
How much time does he has?