Matt Shanahan

Storytelling Lessons: Brandon Sanderson's "Promises"

Without promises, stories are boring.

Brandon Sanderson, one of this generation's most successful fantasy writers, breaks plot into three sections: Promises, Progress, and Payoff. Let’s analyze Promises and explore why this is the key to crafting engaging stories.

You can make all sorts of promises in a story including:

Making promises early in your writing serves two key functions: Setting Expectations and Creating Suspense.

Setting expectations keeps the audience from wasting their time wondering, "Is this story for me?".

In his lecture, Sanderson uses the Sci-Fi novel Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, as an example. Jordan’s prologue transports the reader to the previous apocalypse that plagued his fantasy world, providing a promise of tone, genre, and conflict. This tells the reader what kind of story they can expect. Now, Jordan can take the time to introduce the protagonist’s backstory without the audience wondering if this story is right for them. He can make character promises and the audience knows that if they’re patient they’ll get to the meat of the story.

Making promises also allows you to create suspense.

By making a promise to the reader, you can either honor or break that promise. If you make 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴 on your promise (which we’ll analyze in the next lesson) and decide to break that promise, you’ve created a plot twist. If you honor that promise, you’ve found a resolution, creating a sense of satisfaction for the reader.

With a promise, your story is engaging.

Without a promise, your story is boring.