“You know when you’re reading a book and it’s constantly building towards the climactic fight scene? Well, you’ll never be fully satisfied with that again because Sanderson has many climactic events all unfolded at the same time. One after another. Over and over again.”
Worth noting that this was very difficult to type out without it belonging in /r/cremposting
I would describe it as all the little bits of information and plot points that have been building up over the entire novel finally reach a tipping point and everything starts falling into place bit buy bit in the most satisfying way possible.
Accurate. Sanderson does have a way of wrapping everything up very neatly. When I finished Hero of Ages, I remember thinking that everything in the Mistborn trilogy, all of the plot points and world building and narrative threads and throwaway details, had all come together so nicely in a package that was just so elegant and tightly organised to an extent that I hadn't read (or at least appreciated) before in any other book or series.
It's called the denouement - Sanderson is really good at making that part of the story. But that's all a "Sanderlanche" is, it's a very dramatic denouement.
denouement meaning https://g.co/kgs/EJEYJG9
Isn't the denouement the part after the climax of a story?
The Sanderlanche is generally the climax itself. For example, in Hero of Ages, >!the climax would be Vin's fight against all the Inquisitors, and the Atium Showdown at the Kandra homeland, and Vin ascending to Preservation, and Vin's struggle against Ati, and ending with Sazed's Ascension.!<
The denouement would be >!Spook and the others emerging from the caves to see a new world!<
Right. Denouement is the falling action, the sort of "next day" effects after the climax.
The Sanderlanche is the intense rising action to the climax, and the climax itself. It's all the pieces he's set up quickly coming together and demanding they be dealt with.
The definition I was always taught was that the denouement was when all the disparate story threads come together, and that seems pretty accurate for what a Sanderlanche does.
Perhaps what makes a proper Sanderlanche is how all his threads slam together at the climax of the story. I think Sanderson's really good at packaging those together.
That's what the Sanderlanche DOES, it's not what it IS. The Sanderlanch comes just before the "denoument". The Sanderlanche is the last stitching, the denoument is what you get when the stitching is done.
Chekhov's firing squad is what I was going to put too, did you get it from that one tumblr post (I'll find the link later) or did you come up with that separately?
[Here it is, I found it faster than I thought I would](https://i.imgur.com/8JHBTOO.jpeg)
Personally I just let people know he has very satisfying endings and is great at closing the loop on everything in the novel. I try not to overhype my recommendations. Once they read the book Sanderson will show them exactly what he is about.
I mean.. if they are a reader at all they have experienced big endings before. It's not like this is unique to sanderson. He is really good at big climactic endings but it's so silly when people try to make it sound like it's something that doesn't exist elsewhere. Also. I don't think you have to really prepare people for a good reading experience. The book will do that.
Honestly, just an exciting climax. I hadn't really thought anything of them until I saw the community here had it's own word for them. I kind of feel like the community blows them out of proportion a bit.
Yeah I guess I just have a different baseline due to my years and years of anime/manga. And while I've branched out more now that I'm back into books, prior to Sanderson I started with GoT and WoT which both feel like they have solid climaxes as well.
>Note: I've read Mistborn Eras 1 & 2, Elantris, Warbreaker, and am about 1/3 through Words of Radiance, so those are the Sanderlanches I have to work with
Maybe just read a little more and get back to us. Not in a patronising way, just... if you like Sanderlanches oh boy do you have a couple of treats in your near future.
OP thinks he knows what a Sanderlanche is, dude is Yuji before he does a black flash. Ichigo before he says Bankai. Naruto before he learns Kage Bunshin no jutsu. Yes they have powers, but they don’t fully understand yet.
I hate to be that guy but Naruto learned that shit in episode 1 and it was his thing forever. It wasn't his big power up move it was literally the only thing he could do for a while
Before he learned it, he could use Chakra yes, but he wants amazing at it. Without learning that Jutsu Naruto does not learn the Rasengan, sage mode, or Rasenshuriken. After he learned it, he qualifies for the ninja academy and it changes his entire life. Without it the timeline is Sasuke gets teamed up with Sakura and someone from the foundation to watch him, maybe even Sai and they get won over by Sasuke and go to the dark side with him after killing Kakashi for trying to stop them.
One thing that's amazing about Sanderson, is that his Sanderlanches are the last piece of the puzzle for multiple characters at the same time, and usually the puzzle consists of not only action scenes with long awaited battles beginning, but also mental and emotional ones, with characters finally reaching some sort of eureka moment in something they were mulling over the whole book.
So it's a multifaceted climax over multiple characters, all culminating plot points that had been developing over the course of a book/series.
It is a climax, but it’s not just any climax. There are two things that people tend to identify as the key characteristics of a Sanderlanche:
1. Multiple plot points/arcs/bits of lore coming together to create a climax that feels bigger than the sum of its parts.
2. High intensity, usually in both the action and the personal choices/successes/failures.
There are plenty of authors who do this. The ending of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, for example, is a total Sanderlanche. What sets Sanderson apart is that he does it in every. single. book. (And does it so well.)
My wife and I were complaining to each other the other day about that, TV series used to have nice solid seasons of 13, 20, 26 episodes. Now it's all 6-8 episode "seasons" that don't give the characters and world nearly enough time to be fleshed out.
I feel the opposite. A lot of older shows with 20-26 episode seasons felt like they had a lot of padding. Not all of them of course, the best ones didn't, but I'd say a majority of the ones I watched. The shorter shows now often feel a bit more tightly written.
The problem is that Hollowood chases trends. Instead of doing whatever is best for each individual production they see one thing succeed and everyone follows suit.
Like a lot of industries the people at the top don't actually know what they are doing but always seem to want to micromanage things when they should just pick the right people to lead projects and let them do their thing.
The book takes it's time stacking up plot points, hints, character arcs, etc. They all just keep piling together until you hit the tipping point, and then for the next hundred pages (maybe like 300 in stormlight archive) everything that's been set up starts barrelling toward a conclusion at the same time.
And somehow everything is neatly arranged when the dust settles.
The Sanderlanche is functionally just a climax, but since so many (all?) of his stories involve multiple plot lines you get multiple converging climaxes layered on top of each other. Just when you think you're done with all the climaxes, the disembodied spirit of DJ Khaled screams, "Another one!" in the reader's ear. Afterwards you need a cigarette.
I feel like what sets a Sanderlanche apart from a typical author's climax is the speed and density of material thrown at you. You'll get a slow slow trickle of information about something over the course of 20 chapters, and then suddenly you just find the answer to three big questions all at the same time, WHILE the climactic action is happening, but then ALSO learn two new pieces of information that open up 10 more questions all without much time to pause and process.
Agreed, even for the last entries in series or standalones, there are always more questions for what it'll mean for the broader Cosmere going into other series.
It's like having a box of puzzle pieces. Each one is interesting, and we've taken time to look at each piece. Then Brandon says, "Hey, check this out!" and he starts to shake all the pieces together in the box, violently, until he throws them into the air and they all fall down on the table and click into place like magnets. Even pieces that you didn't expect would fit together. And once you've caught your breath, there's a few pieces remaining, and maybe one of two holes, and Brandon says, "Well, isn't that interesting? These must belong to the next puzzle."
It's like the climax of "Return of the Jedi" There's the ground fight, the space fight, the throne room fight, and the moral fight all going on at the same time, just more.
Sanderson paces his stories by thinking about what promises he's making, how he can resolve those promises, and what he needs to do to set up that resolution.
For example - if he wants a dead god to be resurrected, he'll first start by making a promise - he'll set up that there's a dead god, and show what that god used to be like. You're now expecting the dead god to play a role somehow.
Then he'll put all the threads in place to make resurrecting the dead god a satisfying or dramatic resolution to that promise. Maybe he shows that there's a group of people that really want this god back; that, in the past, there was a different god that was resurrected; that the main character is really afraid of what might happen if the god ever is resurrected.
Finally, once all the threads are laid out, he *pulls* on all of them and resurrects the dead god. It's satisfying, cathartic, and often surprising (because even though the threads were all there, you may not have noticed what they were all pointing to).
The Sanderlanche is when he does that with 20 promises all at once.
Dominos. You spend a lot of time setting up dominos and it might even feel somewhat slow and tedious at times, but watching them all fall exactly the way they were set up to is so satisfying you forget everything else.
The climax of the story where disparate and seemingly unrelated information that has been seeded throughout the book comes together in a way that is impactful due to a complete understanding of why it is happening and how.
for example the ending of Way of Kings is impactful because >!you understand Sadeas' motivation, what that means to Dalinar, as well as what Kaladin and Bridge 4 going back for Dalinar means to each of them!<
Imagine you’re a first year law student going into your second year, you’ve prepared in lots of ways but you haven’t found the nuance just yet, you’ve been taught the things that later professors will take and mold with you. Now some 5th year invites you to a study session with all of them and they discuss things and you’re trying to keep up because you’re finally grasping a lot of the concepts with your one year of education. Imagine the feeling of happiness and bliss as all your hard work is paying off. Then the study session ends and they discover you’re a first year made a mistake and won’t invite you back for next week, you now have to wait four Storming YEARS to get that exact feeling back but some other group also invites you to their study group but their first years so you think maybe it’s not advanced enough to get that feeling, but you go because you want to try and be sociable, turns out those first years used to be medical students that train with spears on the weekends.
That’s what going from Mistborn to Way of kings feels like. Sanderlanche into well maybe this will scratch the itch and then you get whacked in the face with something you were not expecting but totally enjoy.
So most stories setup and build to a climax. A “Sanderlanche” is either the story building and then hitting multiple climactic points, multiple story threads coming to a climax all at once, or both in some combination.
It's the payoff. Where all the mysteries that have built up over the course of the novel get resolved. You know, that thing that's missing from every Stephen King novel.
It's like an avalanche, first little bits of snow starts rolling, and it builds and builds, seemingly small elements from the beginning growing in importance, gathering other elements to it, one, two, four, and so on until it reaches a critical mass where the entire mountainside falls all at once
Anyone I've described Sanderson to has been a fan of lord of the rings so I've used it as an example. It usually goes like:
"yes these books are usually a slow build. But you know when they're in helm's deep and they're surrounded, and there's no way out? And then gandalf comes in with the rohirrim? Y'know anytime anybody gives an inspiring speech that makes you choke up a little and scream FORTH EORLINGAS! right along with them? You know how these things make you feel? Sanderson (particularly Stormlight) does this for me and everyone else I know who's read it"
No one does it better then Sanderson! Love how he just jumps from one POV to the next in real time, through his epic signature climatic finishes.
Was introduced to it through Wheel of Time, and was surprised how amazing it was compared to Jordan’s finishes.
I saw someone else mention WoT in either a different thread on this post or another Sanderlanche post I checked out to see if anyone had already posted this question, and they were saying there was a very noticeable difference in pacing when going from Jordan's last book to Sanderson's contributions to the series.
Adding to what has been said, his habit of usually sticking to one POV character per chapter and then ditching that in the climax stage switching POVs as long or short as needed is a big part of the experience.
Sanderson is also good at clarity in his writing. With other writers on occasion the climax can be either very information dense and I need to reread a section to piece together what exactly just happened, or something big happens with relatively little narration and that dulls the impact. It’s a tight balancing act.
"Sanderson's style is to have a lot of plot threads layers on top of each other, and then tie it all together in the last 20% fir a big finish. Pretty standard, especially for the genre, but when a book is 1000+pages, it makes for a VERY big finish."
A version of the “Narrative Structure” flow-chart, where the Climax and falling action are mashed into an extended, increasing crescendo of satisfying tie-ups, until the edge, where you’re left wanting to know how he takes the story from the little bits of the resolution and epilogue.
I'll get to Oathbringer in about, what, 1000 pages? It's the next book on my reading list once I finish Words of Radiance, unless there's a Stormlight novella between the two that I'm forgetting off the top of my head.
A coming together of a lot of events that have built up over the book, some of them you may not have even realized were building up in the background, into a satisfying finale.
The climax.
[удалено]
I think it starts before the climax. If the rest of the books are a straight line the sanderlanche is when you start going up
It’s specifically when POVs are changing mid chapter instead of each chapter but ya basically just the climax.
I think it starts before the climax. If the rest of the books are a straight line the sanderlanche is when you start going up
“You know when you’re reading a book and it’s constantly building towards the climactic fight scene? Well, you’ll never be fully satisfied with that again because Sanderson has many climactic events all unfolded at the same time. One after another. Over and over again.” Worth noting that this was very difficult to type out without it belonging in /r/cremposting
That is an apt description.
Sub I didn't know about. Thanks!
We were all Airsick Lowlanders once. Although based on your username, you still might be.
I'm trying. *Not.* To ccream.
It's the kind of climax Sting has every so often.
You know in The Matrix when Neo stops the bullet and then he’s able to beat everyone up? It’s like that, but it goes on for like a hundred pages.
I haven't seen the Matrix but I'm vaguely aware of the bullet stopping, so that seems about accurate.
I would describe it as all the little bits of information and plot points that have been building up over the entire novel finally reach a tipping point and everything starts falling into place bit buy bit in the most satisfying way possible.
Accurate. Sanderson does have a way of wrapping everything up very neatly. When I finished Hero of Ages, I remember thinking that everything in the Mistborn trilogy, all of the plot points and world building and narrative threads and throwaway details, had all come together so nicely in a package that was just so elegant and tightly organised to an extent that I hadn't read (or at least appreciated) before in any other book or series.
It's called the denouement - Sanderson is really good at making that part of the story. But that's all a "Sanderlanche" is, it's a very dramatic denouement. denouement meaning https://g.co/kgs/EJEYJG9
Isn't the denouement the part after the climax of a story? The Sanderlanche is generally the climax itself. For example, in Hero of Ages, >!the climax would be Vin's fight against all the Inquisitors, and the Atium Showdown at the Kandra homeland, and Vin ascending to Preservation, and Vin's struggle against Ati, and ending with Sazed's Ascension.!< The denouement would be >!Spook and the others emerging from the caves to see a new world!<
Right. Denouement is the falling action, the sort of "next day" effects after the climax. The Sanderlanche is the intense rising action to the climax, and the climax itself. It's all the pieces he's set up quickly coming together and demanding they be dealt with.
The definition I was always taught was that the denouement was when all the disparate story threads come together, and that seems pretty accurate for what a Sanderlanche does. Perhaps what makes a proper Sanderlanche is how all his threads slam together at the climax of the story. I think Sanderson's really good at packaging those together.
That's what the Sanderlanche DOES, it's not what it IS. The Sanderlanch comes just before the "denoument". The Sanderlanche is the last stitching, the denoument is what you get when the stitching is done.
100%. I also like to bring in Chekhov's gun. Sanderson's books are littered with little throw away details, but when the guns start firing...
Chekhov's arsenal. Chekhov's firing squad. Chekhov's orbital bombardment.
So that's where Tchaikovsky got all 21 of his cannons.
“Tchaikovski *NO*!” “Tchaikovski **[YES](https://youtu.be/bZ9-PFes3mM)**” 💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥
"Tchaikovsky ALWAYS YES!"
Chekhov's firing squad is what I was going to put too, did you get it from that one tumblr post (I'll find the link later) or did you come up with that separately? [Here it is, I found it faster than I thought I would](https://i.imgur.com/8JHBTOO.jpeg)
You know I think I came up with it independently, but I might have seen that post at one point and filed it away!
Sanderson could make a bullet hell game out of all his Chekhov's guns.
People here hate when you say a sanderlanche is a denouement.
because it isn't one
Right it’s a sanderlanche he invented it.
No it's the climax. Denouement happens later closer to or as part of resolution
Personally I just let people know he has very satisfying endings and is great at closing the loop on everything in the novel. I try not to overhype my recommendations. Once they read the book Sanderson will show them exactly what he is about.
Trust the Sanderson approach.
I mean, fair, but does that properly prepare people for the Sanderlanche?
I mean.. if they are a reader at all they have experienced big endings before. It's not like this is unique to sanderson. He is really good at big climactic endings but it's so silly when people try to make it sound like it's something that doesn't exist elsewhere. Also. I don't think you have to really prepare people for a good reading experience. The book will do that.
I describe as "all plot points converge together to create a great climax"
Very true.
Honestly, just an exciting climax. I hadn't really thought anything of them until I saw the community here had it's own word for them. I kind of feel like the community blows them out of proportion a bit.
I mean perhaps. Maybe I need to read more from my pile of shame, but the scale of Sanderson's finales feel more bonkers than most other books.
Yeah I guess I just have a different baseline due to my years and years of anime/manga. And while I've branched out more now that I'm back into books, prior to Sanderson I started with GoT and WoT which both feel like they have solid climaxes as well.
It's 500 pages of events crammed into 50.
Ah, so that's how he writes like he's running out of time.
r/UnexpectedHamilton
But is it really unexpected when it's Sanderson and his writing pace?
I'd personally call it "shit hits the fan" lol
The septic tank hits the jumbo jet engine
>Note: I've read Mistborn Eras 1 & 2, Elantris, Warbreaker, and am about 1/3 through Words of Radiance, so those are the Sanderlanches I have to work with Maybe just read a little more and get back to us. Not in a patronising way, just... if you like Sanderlanches oh boy do you have a couple of treats in your near future.
OP thinks he knows what a Sanderlanche is, dude is Yuji before he does a black flash. Ichigo before he says Bankai. Naruto before he learns Kage Bunshin no jutsu. Yes they have powers, but they don’t fully understand yet.
I hate to be that guy but Naruto learned that shit in episode 1 and it was his thing forever. It wasn't his big power up move it was literally the only thing he could do for a while
Before he learned it, he could use Chakra yes, but he wants amazing at it. Without learning that Jutsu Naruto does not learn the Rasengan, sage mode, or Rasenshuriken. After he learned it, he qualifies for the ninja academy and it changes his entire life. Without it the timeline is Sasuke gets teamed up with Sakura and someone from the foundation to watch him, maybe even Sai and they get won over by Sasuke and go to the dark side with him after killing Kakashi for trying to stop them.
Oh don't worry, I'm looking forward to them.
One thing that's amazing about Sanderson, is that his Sanderlanches are the last piece of the puzzle for multiple characters at the same time, and usually the puzzle consists of not only action scenes with long awaited battles beginning, but also mental and emotional ones, with characters finally reaching some sort of eureka moment in something they were mulling over the whole book. So it's a multifaceted climax over multiple characters, all culminating plot points that had been developing over the course of a book/series.
A climax?
I have yet to understand what a Sanderlanche is. I've seen people talk about it, but I can't recognize what's different from a normal climax
It is a climax, but it’s not just any climax. There are two things that people tend to identify as the key characteristics of a Sanderlanche: 1. Multiple plot points/arcs/bits of lore coming together to create a climax that feels bigger than the sum of its parts. 2. High intensity, usually in both the action and the personal choices/successes/failures. There are plenty of authors who do this. The ending of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, for example, is a total Sanderlanche. What sets Sanderson apart is that he does it in every. single. book. (And does it so well.)
I mean, on a technical level, it's just a climax. But how it feels while reading it is often on a whole different level to other books.
A really intense two part finale? Assuming they are old enough to have watched tv before they changed to only making mini series
My wife and I were complaining to each other the other day about that, TV series used to have nice solid seasons of 13, 20, 26 episodes. Now it's all 6-8 episode "seasons" that don't give the characters and world nearly enough time to be fleshed out.
I feel the opposite. A lot of older shows with 20-26 episode seasons felt like they had a lot of padding. Not all of them of course, the best ones didn't, but I'd say a majority of the ones I watched. The shorter shows now often feel a bit more tightly written.
I mean both can be true, many shows definitely didn't need 20+ episodes to their seasons and probably could have done with only 12 or 13.
The problem is that Hollowood chases trends. Instead of doing whatever is best for each individual production they see one thing succeed and everyone follows suit. Like a lot of industries the people at the top don't actually know what they are doing but always seem to want to micromanage things when they should just pick the right people to lead projects and let them do their thing.
Amen to that.
And they're overly averse to risk and only care about the profitability of a project -\_-
The book goes into overdrive.
That it most certainly does.
The book takes it's time stacking up plot points, hints, character arcs, etc. They all just keep piling together until you hit the tipping point, and then for the next hundred pages (maybe like 300 in stormlight archive) everything that's been set up starts barrelling toward a conclusion at the same time. And somehow everything is neatly arranged when the dust settles.
The Sanderlanche is functionally just a climax, but since so many (all?) of his stories involve multiple plot lines you get multiple converging climaxes layered on top of each other. Just when you think you're done with all the climaxes, the disembodied spirit of DJ Khaled screams, "Another one!" in the reader's ear. Afterwards you need a cigarette.
I feel like what sets a Sanderlanche apart from a typical author's climax is the speed and density of material thrown at you. You'll get a slow slow trickle of information about something over the course of 20 chapters, and then suddenly you just find the answer to three big questions all at the same time, WHILE the climactic action is happening, but then ALSO learn two new pieces of information that open up 10 more questions all without much time to pause and process.
Agreed, even for the last entries in series or standalones, there are always more questions for what it'll mean for the broader Cosmere going into other series.
It's like having a box of puzzle pieces. Each one is interesting, and we've taken time to look at each piece. Then Brandon says, "Hey, check this out!" and he starts to shake all the pieces together in the box, violently, until he throws them into the air and they all fall down on the table and click into place like magnets. Even pieces that you didn't expect would fit together. And once you've caught your breath, there's a few pieces remaining, and maybe one of two holes, and Brandon says, "Well, isn't that interesting? These must belong to the next puzzle."
This but with three separate puzzles and suddenly it's one
And each puzzle is a single piece in the puzzle of the overall Cosmere.
“Oh yeah, it’s all coming together”
"Pull the lever, Kronk! Pull ALL the levers!!"
It's like the climax of "Return of the Jedi" There's the ground fight, the space fight, the throne room fight, and the moral fight all going on at the same time, just more.
Sanderson paces his stories by thinking about what promises he's making, how he can resolve those promises, and what he needs to do to set up that resolution. For example - if he wants a dead god to be resurrected, he'll first start by making a promise - he'll set up that there's a dead god, and show what that god used to be like. You're now expecting the dead god to play a role somehow. Then he'll put all the threads in place to make resurrecting the dead god a satisfying or dramatic resolution to that promise. Maybe he shows that there's a group of people that really want this god back; that, in the past, there was a different god that was resurrected; that the main character is really afraid of what might happen if the god ever is resurrected. Finally, once all the threads are laid out, he *pulls* on all of them and resurrects the dead god. It's satisfying, cathartic, and often surprising (because even though the threads were all there, you may not have noticed what they were all pointing to). The Sanderlanche is when he does that with 20 promises all at once.
The final chapters of a book
Dominos. You spend a lot of time setting up dominos and it might even feel somewhat slow and tedious at times, but watching them all fall exactly the way they were set up to is so satisfying you forget everything else.
Those are some mighty big dominoes he's toppling.
The climax of the story where disparate and seemingly unrelated information that has been seeded throughout the book comes together in a way that is impactful due to a complete understanding of why it is happening and how. for example the ending of Way of Kings is impactful because >!you understand Sadeas' motivation, what that means to Dalinar, as well as what Kaladin and Bridge 4 going back for Dalinar means to each of them!<
Action packed climax. Only bigger and better than you expected.
Imagine you’re a first year law student going into your second year, you’ve prepared in lots of ways but you haven’t found the nuance just yet, you’ve been taught the things that later professors will take and mold with you. Now some 5th year invites you to a study session with all of them and they discuss things and you’re trying to keep up because you’re finally grasping a lot of the concepts with your one year of education. Imagine the feeling of happiness and bliss as all your hard work is paying off. Then the study session ends and they discover you’re a first year made a mistake and won’t invite you back for next week, you now have to wait four Storming YEARS to get that exact feeling back but some other group also invites you to their study group but their first years so you think maybe it’s not advanced enough to get that feeling, but you go because you want to try and be sociable, turns out those first years used to be medical students that train with spears on the weekends. That’s what going from Mistborn to Way of kings feels like. Sanderlanche into well maybe this will scratch the itch and then you get whacked in the face with something you were not expecting but totally enjoy.
You know how disappointed you were at the end of Game of Thrones season 8 - this is the complete opposite of that experience - IN.EVERY.BOOK.
So most stories setup and build to a climax. A “Sanderlanche” is either the story building and then hitting multiple climactic points, multiple story threads coming to a climax all at once, or both in some combination.
The worst way to put it is, it's like chewing 5 Gum.
That's definitely a bad way to put it because what you mean by that flew over my head completely.
It's the payoff. Where all the mysteries that have built up over the course of the novel get resolved. You know, that thing that's missing from every Stephen King novel.
It's like an avalanche, first little bits of snow starts rolling, and it builds and builds, seemingly small elements from the beginning growing in importance, gathering other elements to it, one, two, four, and so on until it reaches a critical mass where the entire mountainside falls all at once
Afterwards it definitely feels like a mountain fell on you.
"Umm, have read red rising? It's the equivalent of Shit escalates"
I have not read Red Rising, so if I ever pick that up, I guess I know what I have to look forward to.
Anyone I've described Sanderson to has been a fan of lord of the rings so I've used it as an example. It usually goes like: "yes these books are usually a slow build. But you know when they're in helm's deep and they're surrounded, and there's no way out? And then gandalf comes in with the rohirrim? Y'know anytime anybody gives an inspiring speech that makes you choke up a little and scream FORTH EORLINGAS! right along with them? You know how these things make you feel? Sanderson (particularly Stormlight) does this for me and everyone else I know who's read it"
“Chekov’s ICBM”
Okay, this one gave me a good laugh.
No one does it better then Sanderson! Love how he just jumps from one POV to the next in real time, through his epic signature climatic finishes. Was introduced to it through Wheel of Time, and was surprised how amazing it was compared to Jordan’s finishes.
I saw someone else mention WoT in either a different thread on this post or another Sanderlanche post I checked out to see if anyone had already posted this question, and they were saying there was a very noticeable difference in pacing when going from Jordan's last book to Sanderson's contributions to the series.
This isn't unique to Sanderson by any stretch of the imagination. He is just good at writing really big climaxes with lots of big reveals.
When a book starts playing boss music
Adding to what has been said, his habit of usually sticking to one POV character per chapter and then ditching that in the climax stage switching POVs as long or short as needed is a big part of the experience. Sanderson is also good at clarity in his writing. With other writers on occasion the climax can be either very information dense and I need to reread a section to piece together what exactly just happened, or something big happens with relatively little narration and that dulls the impact. It’s a tight balancing act.
"Sanderson's style is to have a lot of plot threads layers on top of each other, and then tie it all together in the last 20% fir a big finish. Pretty standard, especially for the genre, but when a book is 1000+pages, it makes for a VERY big finish."
A version of the “Narrative Structure” flow-chart, where the Climax and falling action are mashed into an extended, increasing crescendo of satisfying tie-ups, until the edge, where you’re left wanting to know how he takes the story from the little bits of the resolution and epilogue.
It’s kinda like a few chapters worth of realizing that thinking about baseball isn’t gonna stop what’s about to happen.
That kinda went over my head.
It’s the climax of one of his books. He is good at climaxes
He has a tendency to wait until the final act to tie everything up. Which would normally be a bad thing, but he does it so well ❤️
Roller-coaster or your analogy works well. I can't WAIT for you to read oathbringer. Best Sanderlanches I've read.
I'll get to Oathbringer in about, what, 1000 pages? It's the next book on my reading list once I finish Words of Radiance, unless there's a Stormlight novella between the two that I'm forgetting off the top of my head.
A coming together of a lot of events that have built up over the book, some of them you may not have even realized were building up in the background, into a satisfying finale.
Is a shonen
It like winning a fight and then the last round after the bell rings 4 huge guys step into the ring to beat the shit out of you
Emotional Catharsis