If you read last week’s article, or have been following my Instagram, or even read Ava’s last article, then you’ll know that last week Ava and I were at Dragonsteel 2025! Here for you today is a recap of all of the AMAZING panels I got to go to. If any of these sounds interesting to you, be sure to check out Brandon Sanderson’s YouTube to see if the full panel is posted!
It’s always great to listen to professionals and their experiences. There was a great selection this year, with authors including Pierce Brown (Red Rising) and Christopher Paolini (Eragon, Fractalverse), which are some fan favorites here at Pen and Sword. Here’s the list of all the panels we went to, and highlights from each!
On Thursday, we started with Inside Emberdark, a panel all about the making of one of Sanderson’s most recent books, Isles of the Emberdark. I was a little worried about this panel considering I hadn’t read the book yet, and I was scared about spoilers, but I am SO glad that I went, because the panel was fascinating. It was really great to hear from some of the Dragonsteel creative team, and the book’s illustrator, Ester Hi’ilani Candari. They walked through the process of making the first edition special, including the cultural influences on the art, the process of making the paintings and art, and the fascinating details behind figuring out how to print half of the book on black paper. I knew after this panel that I NEEDED this book. Later on in the day, when checking out the Dragonsteel store, I was able to nab the day’s very last copy available. Talk about lucky.
Next up was the Peirce Brown Spotlight, which of course starred the man himself accompanied by the charismatic Maude Garret, the host of Maude’s Book Club. Now, as of writing this, I’m 3/4 of my way through Golden Son, so once again I was afraid of spoilers. But they both did such a good job of discussing the series, and the current state of the final Red Rising book, Red God. They did a great job of not alienating or spoiling things for those of us not up to date in the series.
Guys, he’s so funny and charismatic. You could tell that he really enjoys being an author and engaging with the fans. He was even wearing a shirt that said “Ad aspera ad trauma” on the front, and had the books and page numbers of all the character deaths on the back. During the panel, he continually mentioned how, with writing this last book, he feels like so much of the series is owned by the readers. I can only imagine how hard it must be to be working on the last book of such an epic saga, knowing how much it means to the readers.
I think the favorite thing that he said during this panel was about finding the moments while writing. He said that he thinks that, once you find the 3-4 scenes of the book that set the tone and inform the book, you have a project that’s starting to fully come together and have something to it. It makes me want to think about what scenes I have written (and have yet to write) that may become these key scenes that make my book what it is.
Okay, buckle in for this one. Christopher Paolini, J.A. Andrews, and Ryan Cahill talked about Stories That Stay With You. This was a really great panel that gave some good advice about how to write a strong story. All three authors had some great insights and specifics that I know I’ll be thinking about in my own writing projects.
Obviously the authors here listed pieces of media that meant a lot to them as they were young and beginning their journeys into writing. Sanderson was of course mentioned, this being Dragonsteel and all, but other classics like The Lord of the Rings, the Wheel of Time, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Dragon Riders of Pern were also mentioned. These are all very common sources of inspiration and it was nice to see them all mentioned.
One things that was continuously mentioned during this panel was the reason that all of these books are so beloved. It’s the perfect blend of a well crafted world, developed characters, and the utilization of real world problems. That these fantastical settings let us explore characters and problems in unique and compelling ways. Fantasy transcends reality. I found this incredibly relatable to my understanding of why fantasy is so compelling, and it’s something that I like to explore in my own writing.
I’ll finish off this panel by sharing one last thought I found particularly poignant: that we as humans are natural story tellers and listeners, and we should do out best to do both in some way or another.
Next, I was able to catch the first half of The Future of Sci-fi and Fantasy panel, which featured Sanderson, Brown, Matt Dinniman, and Tomi Adeyemi (who I just fell in love with). This was a super fun panel where they talked about a lot of the trends and current things going on in the genre. Sanderson talked about how he was surprised he didn’t see Fourth Wing coming (dragons plus kissing?) and Brown mentioned wanting to see more romance in sci-fi (which he called science friction).
One main takeaway is that we can’t predict trends, and right now is a time where so many doors are being opened. Self publishing is a great option for getting a foot in the door, and even publication agencies are becoming more willing to see weird things through, with the success of far fetched concepts like Dinniman’s own Dungeon Crawler Carl. This is always encouraging to hear as a writer, and I remember a piece of advice that I’ve gotten before: don’t write for the trends. Write for you.
I unfortunately missed the end of that panel, because I went to go see the Cozy Fantasy panel that started upstairs, featuring Haylock Jobson, Kylee Hansen, and Kenny Gould. As someone who writes primarily in this genre, I would be remiss if I hadn’t gone to see it. And I wasn’t disappointed! Not only did I walk out with a few books to read, but I also got some good advice and insight into why this genre is currently booming.
One thing that really stuck with me is that often times, the character is what really progresses, not necessarily the stakes. Sure, events may seem grim for the character often times, like losing a home or a loved one, but it sure pales in comparison to the world ending tragedies of other fantasy books. But here, we zoom in on a particular person’s troubles and really get to know them. We root for them, understand them, and celebrate their successes. It can be really nice to just enjoy a good personal journey.
From a writing standpoint, I really liked something that Jobson said. he was asked if if the coziness comes to him, or if he finds the cozy around him first. Kinda a chicken vs the egg sort of thing. He talked about how when he wrote his book, Heretical Fishing, he was in a really tough place in his life, and he was able to make it better and find some escapism through writing. Often times, we find comfort in our books, whether we’re reading them or writing them.
Last on our very panel heavy day was the Tailored Realities Release Event, which was such a banger. Here, Sanderson gave one of the best arguments against AI art I have ever heard, period. If any of you have read through the blog here, you’ve likely noticed out little AI disclaimer at the end of each article. While I’m sure we can all acknowledge some of the merits and uses of AI, it’s bad for the environment, for critical thinking skills, and for the creative world. Sanderson perfectly hits all of these points in the speech he gave here. Seriously, go check it out now. I can’t do it justice here. But I will share that he ends with the message that we, the writers, are the art, which was so inspiring to hear in a world where AI slop is getting more attention than any art that takes time and effort.
He ended the release event by sharing the first two chapters of yet another mystery project The Fires of December, due to release next year. If you click the link above, after his lecture is the reading, and it was so good, guys. Funny, intriguing, and engaging from the start. You know I’ll be getting this one ASAP.
Our first panel of Friday was New Cosmere Art, which is a bit hard to talk about when you don’t have all the art handy. But this panel was a really good look into a ton of the concept art that goes into all things Cosmere, such as the books, the RPG and card games, and even fan art that has become a part of canon. This was all around a cool panel with a lot of great visuals and insights from Ben McSweeney and Johnny O’Neal. Check out both of their awesome art sometime.
Probably the most informative panel of the day was Crafting Interesting Characters, hosted by the wonderful Ben McSweeney, Joel Daniel Phillips, Peter Orullian, and Charlie Holmberg. It was great to hear such wonderful writers and artists discuss what makes a character compelling, both visually and story-wise. This panel was almost all Q&A, which really worked in this case. I took a lot of notes on this one that would take a lot to go into, so I’ll share a few highlights.
One thing that was very poignant was figuring out a character’s want vs their need. I’ve talked about this in some of my creative writing courses, but what was specifically mentioned here is that often times we find the character’s flaw in this difference, and this can make even temporary or side characters really stand out. When making a character, consider their secret goal, and the lie they tell themselves.
One takeaway that I got that you’ll likely see in the future is to do flash pieces of scenarios. How would different characters act to the same situation. As someone who is still working on how to make each character distinct in their works, this is something I want to practice and will likely share here with you all.
Lastly for this panel was about balancing backstory, and whether a book should be written character first, or world first. A lot of this depends on the type of book you’re writing. Usually, big books are built world first, with characters that are interacting and acting on the big events. Smaller scale books, like cozy fantasy, tend to be character specific and have personal problems within a zoomed in world view. For both, the advice on backstory is to not be super heavy with it, and to find those organic moments where it can come into play. Interactions with characters. Reminiscing on memories. Times where it makes sense to look back in the past.
I’m really sad to say that Tales of Publishing was a disappointment, especially since it featured Jobson, Evan Leikam, Will Wight, and Shawn Spearman. Ava and I were really excited for this one, as we’re both at the point in some of our projects where publication is at the forefront of progress. But unfortunately, this panel felt more like personal experiences on writing and getting into the craft versus actually moving onto publishing. I did get some good tidbits, like focus on finishing a draft before going crazy on the editing, and to enjoy all of the possibilities in a current draft, but there really wasn’t much about how to go about finding a publisher or even self publishing. It was a shame, since the authors present all did a great job and were very likable, but I feel like the questions they were asked by the moderator weren’t very applicable or useful to those of us wanting to get published.
Probably the best panel of the entire weekend was Dragons, Dragons, Dragons, which was a comical debate where Jakob DeLlamas assigned Paolini and Cahill each a dragon from media, and they had to debate why their dragon would win. This was hilarious, and made me fall in love with Cahill even more than I already had over the last few days. All three of these guys were so funny and ready to have a good time. It was so much fun to witness moments like Paolini finding out Charizard is not a dragon type, or Cahill rightfully winning the argument that the Dragon from Shrek is peak. So much fun here.
And on Saturday we really only had one panel! Forging Worlds: Stories and Art in the Cosmere. This was a world building focused panel hosted by Sanderson himself, alongside Dan Dos Santos and Isaac Stewart, and they shared some of the insights that go into building a world of epic scale. My main insights here were on the point that a world is best built when it is done in service of the story. Sanderson took six months of time to just world build for The Way of Kings Prime. And while a lot of the stuff he built there was used, he needed to remember that it’s the characters that help make the world. We need to focus on the characters and how they interact, as well as let the world work around them. Dos Santos shared some wonderful art while Sanderson spoke, including a ton of images that went into his new Warbreaker cover that was just announced for next year.
And those are all the panels we went to! I love learning and really miss all the great lectures I got in college, so I of course enjoyed every minute from these panelists. I took some great notes, had some major laughs, and thoroughly enjoyed my time at Dragonsteel 2025. You bet I’ll be back next year, ready for more.
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