Note: These are my reconstructions of Brandon Sanderson’s 2025 writing lectures, filtered through my own teaching interests. They aren’t transcripts. Think of them more as annotated margins than a polished essay.

Orientation for the reader

Here I’m treating the 2025 lecture as the primary text. The 2020 course shows up mainly as background, since the older orientation lecture makes Sanderson’s teaching stance unusually explicit. That earlier framing helps clarify what he’s doing differently in 2025.

1) Writing as practice, not formula

Sanderson opens the 2025 course with a thesis that quietly shapes everything that follows: writing improves through repeated doing. Teaching can speed that process up, but it can’t replace the reps.

Writing advice is most useful when you treat it as a tool to test, not a rule to follow. Universal-sounding rules usually hide a specific context that the teacher forgot to mention.

A useful way to approach advice is to ask what specific problem it is trying to solve, and under what conditions it works.

In the 2020 lectures, Sanderson made a similar point but seemed more defensive, opening with the question “Can writing even be taught?” before conceding that much advice collapses into trial and error. In 2025, that defensiveness disappears. Repetition is simply treated as part of the trade.

Students often hear “practice” as motivational fluff, and when improvement isn’t immediate they assume they’re failing. A more helpful teaching frame treats practice as structured experimentation. Practice generates data, and data makes diagnosis possible.

2) Planning vs. discovery (useful as a spectrum)

Sanderson positions outlining and discovery writing as points on a spectrum rather than opposing camps. This matters because the method that works best shifts with project size, genre, and even life circumstances.

The most important permission here is inconsistency. You can outline one project, discovery-write the next, and switch again later.

Planning becomes more important when projects have many moving parts or deadlines. Discovery tends to help when a project is still exploratory or when outlining drains momentum.

In 2020, Sanderson spent more time addressing conflicting writing advice, framing outlining versus discovery as a false dichotomy that remains useful as a model. Even architects discovery-write, he joked; they just do it between bullet points.

Students often want the “correct” method because schooling rewards certainty. The spectrum model pushes them instead to notice what increases momentum and quality, rather than adopting a method as an identity.

3) From recipes to principles

Sanderson repeatedly distinguishes between technique and principle. Techniques function like recipes: “Do this.” Principles explain mechanisms: why something works and when it will fail.

When advice sounds procedural, it helps to look for the underlying mechanism. “Add tension” is vague as instruction, but clearer as a principle: give readers a reason to wonder what happens next. “Show, don’t tell” works better when reframed as choosing when readers need emotional immediacy and when they simply need information.

4) Skill development across projects

One of Sanderson’s recurring claims is that early manuscripts function as training rather than finished products. Completing several imperfect projects teaches more than endlessly polishing one.

A single manuscript rarely forces you to learn the entire craft. Multiple projects make the full cycle visible.

Different phases demand different skills. Drafting isn’t revising. Starting isn’t finishing. Often clarity only emerges after the cycle repeats a few times.

Speed and quality tend to arrive sequentially, not in conflict. Common traps include planners who avoid drafting by outlining indefinitely, and discovery writers who revise forever because drafts never fully solidify.

The 2020 course leaned heavily on what Sanderson called “consistency math”—word counts, schedules, deadlines—to make finishing feel realistic. That scaffolding supports the 2025 emphasis on repetition.

5) The professional frame

Sanderson teaches as though students intend to become professionals. “Professional” here refers to seriousness of approach rather than income. A professional frame encourages habits, deadlines, and resilience.

My own working version involves showing up regularly, tolerating weak drafts, and treating revision as reconstruction rather than surface polish.

In 2020, Sanderson used an NBA analogy to reduce pressure, pointing out that writing can be good for you without being your livelihood. That distinction helps keep the professional frame from turning into guilt for hobbyists.

6) The writer as the primary product

This may be the lecture’s most striking claim: manuscripts matter, but writers matter more.

Texts are artifacts. Skill accumulates across artifacts. Writer identity develops through repeated cycles of making, finishing, and revising.

There’s a parallel in academic writing, where student papers are often treated as disposable. A developmental view instead treats each paper as practice in argument, evidence use, and structure. The goal isn’t just a better paper but a writer capable of writing the next one more effectively.

7) Context note: how 2020 and 2025 feel different

The 2020 orientation worked partly as persuasion and reassurance for a broad university audience, spending time on course history and student realities. The 2025 lecture feels leaner and more philosophical. It assumes buy-in and foregrounds Sanderson’s stance toward method, repetition, and craftsmanship rather than defending the premise.