Check out this AWESOME Comic Con panel I did with TAD WILLIAMS kzfaq.info/get/bejne/edWKeK1np9HPeWw.html

I'm sure Brian Lee Durfee will never see this, but his story was so similar to mine (right down to where he grew up) it gave me chills. Similar to him, I started writing my first fantasy novel in my teens. I was inspired by Dragonlance, Sword of Shannara, etc... to write one of my own. Obviously my tastes and writing style have changed as I delved into series like Wheel of Time and Game of Thrones.. But here I am, 20+ years later, still working on the 142nd (or so) iteration of it, with two additional decades of life experience, writing practice, scrapping and re-starts, reading, more reading, and countless hours of writing/technical research under my belt. And now, I'm probably within a year of having my first book of a series ready to query. Obviously, I don't know if it will ever be published. It's impossible to know how good or bad your own work is until a professional rips it apart. But it's nice to know that successful authors have been down this path before.

Brian McClellan is obviously a student of Brandon Sanderson. Everything he said was full of Sanderson’s teachings. Not verbatim, but strongly influenced.

This whole panel is superb, I initially only knew Larry and Jim, but have grow to love all of them as well as the writing wisdom they give. You guys are all amazing!

So cool to see all these authors together. I like what Jim Butcher said about tropes being like parts of a machine, only useful if they are used in the right way. In my novel The Repeaters I used a couple of tropes (immortality and amnesia), but I think I used them in original ways that I personally have not seen done before.

This panel is always a fun one to watch

I surprised there are no comments, so I don't really know what I'm supposed to write other than "first comment", but I also want to say that the way these author discussed tropes helped come to many realizations on how tropes affect the plot of a novel.

This is what I'll say about tropes; tropes are fine as long as you make them more than a trope.

Excellent panel...sorry it took me 5 years to find it. Love Jim's & Larry's books and BLD's book reviews. Need to read his and the other two guys' books...as soon as I get through my backlog of books....I seriously can't add another author until I'm up to date on the authors I currently read.

Damn. This was one hell of a panel.

When “trope” becomes a trope. 8 minutes in, if it were a drinking game per mention of the word “trope,” I’d be face down in a toilet already.

OMFG Jim butcher cutting class to read. Seriously my own mother used to make fun of me for doing this

One of the best panels I’ve ever seen, hilarious and instructive.

Any chance you can rearrange the title so that each author's name appears in the order they're sitting? It's tiny, but would be nice.

This was very awesome .

All the cheering makes it like a concert.

I slowly maturing this idea of writing a fantasy story myself. This discussion was amazing. Any advice for a possible future competitor or yours?

Imagine if Brandon Sanderson was on this panel too.

I like fantasy in which "magic" plays only a small role (like Game of Thrones) or in which it is dangerous and can only be used at great risk to the user (like The Lord of the Rings or old Manley Wade Wellman stories) I find stories in which magic is represented as being easy and fun and without any real consequences to the user (like Harry Potter) irritating and dull and I also have a thing against the "sexy vampire" trope because it basically gives lazy writers an excuse to create characters with superhuman abilities and no human faults to balance them out.

Snorting gunpowder haha I just gotta read it.

Did I hear "You look like a trope!" at 1:00

Got a magic system in a magic system, with a little bit of a magic system on the side. (I personally would have asked when you stop second guessing and doubting the quality of everything in the novel. I cannot stop seeing everything I write as awful.)

Can you write if you dont read? I have lots of cool ideas piled up, and have started working on a story. But because of my dyslexia i get tired real fast while reading. Haven't finished a book since highshool...

Def got magic system and ninja assassins... uh oh

Brian, 38:24 speaking of your mother Stevie.

There was a plucky princess in the trailer park elves / gnomes turf war story ...

if you cant find the butcher spider man book, its on audible

We now have LitRPG which is dedicated to the whole role-playing genre, including the races and character classes. But _outside_ LitRPG, I don't think you could do classical elves.