Get ready to break down and analysis the first pages of fantasy novels–including Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, and more!
LINK TO BOOKS & THEIR SAMPLES PAGES:
Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling: https://amzn.to/4dwTNW0
Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson: https://amzn.to/3XcDurB
The Gunslinger by Stephen King: https://amzn.to/3XeajUV
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin: https://amzn.to/4dXmNGf
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Get Brandon’s horror/thriller novel The Half Murders:
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– AUDIBLE (USA): https://shorturl.at/goFG9
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Get Brandon’s supernatural thriller novel ENTRY WOUNDS:
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CHECK OUT MY OTHER VIDEOS:
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https://youtu.be/012OMrKp85M
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https://youtu.be/rGqR3Oj61yo
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https://youtu.be/_2mYh1-33-Y
5 Time-Saving Tips for Writers (And Readers!)
https://youtu.be/z-Hjg70clbw
5 Scientific Inaccuracies in Movies, TV, & Books
https://youtu.be/MeaamwDwg9w
The BEST Writing Exercise Out There
https://youtu.be/nHXprJhiqzs
How to Write a Book Pitch
https://youtu.be/4paxjmDoXIw
Writing Villains #1 – Start with Your Hero
https://youtu.be/IVcy-_FkPJI
Writing Villains #2 – Goals
https://youtu.be/_1lmtZQr8RY
Writing Villains #3 – Motivation
https://youtu.be/tJH78C3nKvg
Writing Villains #4 – When to Introduce Your Villain
https://youtu.be/FCzs0tuWICY
Writing Villains #5 – Plot Points for Villains
https://youtu.be/IKuZjpPVxak
Writing Villains #6 – Impacting the Hero
https://youtu.be/XmHLiFlfqNY
The Anatomy of Story REVIEW:
https://youtu.be/IWxdj9rKCu8
Save the Cat Writes a Novel REVIEW:
https://youtu.be/w-5x0QFUc4w
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Great video! I’d love some more book analysis
That Jerry Potter book seems interesting. Does anybody know if they've made a movie from it?
This makes me realize that I actually got the opening of my story pretty darn good. Guess that's what happens when you keep realizing you need to shove the opening further back in the timeline to get things to make sense.
That wasn’t mistborn's first page. That was the first chapter's first page.
Saying it cause you used GOT prologue's first page
"First the smiles, then the lies: It was the Vatican way." -Arkhem J. Cain, The Eighth Sacrament
You hit on mine. The Gunslinger is one opening I actually remember just pausing after I read and thinking how awesome it was.
3:21, you’re right. A lot more people in the world read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
8:00, wouldn’t the opening pages of Mistborn be when Kelsier assassinates a local lord who’ oppressing the skaa
I got a video idea: Can you make a video on how to write a deuteragonist including their role, when to introduce them, etc?
I'm a screenwriter (unproduced) and I obviously have no complaint about the usual video based format. As long as there is advice here to improve my writing in general, I'm happy.
GoT is easily the best of the bunch here. And hearing it last just showed how much a step above the rest GRRM is as a writer.
"The gale tore at him and he felt it bite deep within and he knew that if they didn't make landfall in three days they would all be dead. Too many deaths on this voyage he thought, I'm Pilot-Major of a dead fleet." – Shogun by James Clavell.
I could not let go from that point on.
harry potter sold over 600M copies and you are saying very few people know about it
Thanks for the great advice about selecting a pseudonym. 😝
I love how you start chapter 1 of Entry Wounds.
The way you described the alleyway by the Ramen Emperor restaurant and how ambient and atmospheric it was.
It also added tension when Catherine saw the armed burglars at the street next to her but then she pulled out her cursed gun hand.
And all of this happened before she was even let in to the restaurant.
Entry Wounds is a certified Brandon classic.
"The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. He's got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest." — Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson 1992
"Once there was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone book came out in 1997 and the movie 2001. Maybe it just wasn't such a big hit in the US 🤷♀️ I'm in the UK so…
Finally we're talking about books… I thought you were a screenwriter… 👍
9:08 I see what you did there
Most important thing is to keep things reigned in a bit. Don't over do. Can't built up anything if you start off to the max.
I don't remember the rest of the page, but I'll never forget the opening line of Kafka's "The Metamorphosis": "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”
Dude, if you're gonna read the first few paragraphs of The Gunslinger at least do the original, not King's fan-baity 2003 rewrite.
Please do more breakdowns of writing! Love it
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a wonderfully irrelevant tone with:
"Far Out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun."
However he topped that in the sequel, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" with:
"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another which states that this has already happened."
I've always felt that the opening paragraph of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House is one of the best things ever written.
The first sentence, first paragraph and first page are all vitally important. Here's the first line from my novel: In the recesses of every city, in the deep corners of every society there lies an unseen, undetected menace.
The Inverted World by Christopher Priest opens with an absolute banger of a line: “I had reached the age of six hundred and fifty miles.”
Not gonna lie i was concerned thorugh half this video like "who the hell didnt know about harry potter" now i didnt read for 2 reason but i knew about it 😂😂😂😂. Then when he got to GOT i was like okay no way 😂😂😂 you had me bro
This evening my girlfriend asked if she could borrow Eragon from me, and we ended up reading the prologue together, and I gotta say, it still slaps
dude no words ur just awesome
This is the best video you've made Brandon 🙂
“When Augustus came out onto the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake—not a very big one. It had probably just been crawling around looking for shade when it ran into the pigs. They were having a fine tug-of-war with it, and it’s rattling days were over.”
It’s strange to see Harry Potter praise after being on Twitter
I've heard of that Potterfield book or whatever it was called and it sounds interesting. Waiting for the movie though.
It's interesting to see some of those Mistborn paragraphs re-read again after so many years. As it later turned out, Vin's idea that the mists were "a thing without thought" was way, way off.
Wahooga!!! I like this!
Oh you put so much work into that video. I'm really impressed as always.
For your question, while I found the book far too drawn out, of all the books I've read, that opening sequence from Moby Dick still, still sends chills down my spine. He found a way to make the ocean beyond exciting to me. It was perfect – and then the novel just – dragged. And dragged but I couldn't argue that Melville knew how to write a tale. He just needed a good editor.
Thank you for using written works instead of film examples. Descriptions of scenes and characters are instantaneous in finished movies (after months or years of developmental artwork and off-camera design and rewriting), but in finished books they take time and pages.
your tone today was really entertaining! loved the "obscure Harry Potter" and the "I love to promote authors named Brandon" bits 😀
Pratchett's opening for "The Colour of Magic" has to be up there.
"In a distant and secondhand set of dimensions, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly…" already made me want to read every Discworld novel I could get my hands on.
👍
It might be because the show did it, but GoT for me is the most memorable opening scene of a book in the genre of high fantasy that I've read…WoT is pretty cool too, so dumb they didn't do it in the show, in fact the show is so far off its quite lame imho…having Matt join the 100 was so stupid given his opinion on joining them in the books
I am sorry, but Game of Thrones sucks – I know I am betting against the house here, but I can't follow his writing to save my life. All the other authors he mentioned are great.
elden ring joke made me actually lol
I love the beginning of The Eye of the World: "The palace still shook occasionally as the earth rumbled in memory, groaned as if it would deny what had happened."
I think that's a great hook. Something just happened that seems traumatic.
This is the best video youv have ever done. Please do more text based videos!
Omg youtube stopped notifying me when you upload videos 😢 i just finished entry wounds, it was great!