FCBD: Brandon Sanderson's Dark One
Jun. 11th, 2020 03:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lordultimus posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
scans_dailyFor those who don't know, Brandon Sanderson is a very successful fantasy author, having written books with huge followings such as Mistborn and the Stormlight Archive, as well as having finished the Wheel of Time series after creator Robert Jordan passed away. While he did not write this comic, he wrote an outline that is also set to become a TV series (the screenplay of the pilot is currently being written by J. Michael Straczynski) as part of a larger multimedia project.
This particular story, with the premise of inverting the "teen from our world goes to become a hero of a fantasy world" storyline by having him become the Dark Lord instead, has always intrigued me, and for once I was grateful for a proper thirty-something page preview rather than waiting until August for the full volume ( the first one, anyways).
This was supposed to be something released with Free Comic Book Day, but with the pandemic, it got delayed, bundled with special purchases, and eventually posted online free here. With permission from the mods, I thought I'd post the whole thing (and text from an author's letter included with the purchases) here.
Warning for dark thoughts and some gore.
“Many years ago I had an idea for a story. Now, ideas aren’t precious things as a writer — you tend to have far more ideas than you can actually write. Some ideas, however, are special. These are the ideas that stay with you, haunt you, refuse to let you leave them alone."
“This was one such idea. What if you discovered that you were a figure from the prophesy of a fantasy world? Only, unlike Harry Potter or any number of mythical heroes from books in the past, what if you found out the prophesy had identified you as the destroyer. Evil in embryo. The Dark One."
“I tried on multiple different occasions to write this story--and it never worked. Until now."
“The key was moving it out of a fantasy world, and making it a hybrid between our world and a fantastical realm. This change, along with making the tone darker, made for the secret blend I’d been hunting. In a furious bout of intense writing (when I should have been working on something else) I developed an outline that I loved. Something that finally worked."
“The only problem was, as I’d paced it, the story didn’t feel like a novel. Not a traditional one, at least. So I began looking for a partnership that would tell the story the way I envisioned. This book is the final culmination of that process: the first story I’ve written intending it to be a graphic novel."
“One of the most frustrating experiences of a writer’s life is having a story that doesn’t work. But there is a delightful experience that goes with that one, hand-in-hand. That’s the day where you finally get it right — when you finally get to see completed something that has required years of labor and worry."
“It is with this sense of delight and long-awaited satisfaction that I finally get to present to you Dark One.”
This particular story, with the premise of inverting the "teen from our world goes to become a hero of a fantasy world" storyline by having him become the Dark Lord instead, has always intrigued me, and for once I was grateful for a proper thirty-something page preview rather than waiting until August for the full volume ( the first one, anyways).
This was supposed to be something released with Free Comic Book Day, but with the pandemic, it got delayed, bundled with special purchases, and eventually posted online free here. With permission from the mods, I thought I'd post the whole thing (and text from an author's letter included with the purchases) here.
Warning for dark thoughts and some gore.
“Many years ago I had an idea for a story. Now, ideas aren’t precious things as a writer — you tend to have far more ideas than you can actually write. Some ideas, however, are special. These are the ideas that stay with you, haunt you, refuse to let you leave them alone."
“This was one such idea. What if you discovered that you were a figure from the prophesy of a fantasy world? Only, unlike Harry Potter or any number of mythical heroes from books in the past, what if you found out the prophesy had identified you as the destroyer. Evil in embryo. The Dark One."
“I tried on multiple different occasions to write this story--and it never worked. Until now."
“The key was moving it out of a fantasy world, and making it a hybrid between our world and a fantastical realm. This change, along with making the tone darker, made for the secret blend I’d been hunting. In a furious bout of intense writing (when I should have been working on something else) I developed an outline that I loved. Something that finally worked."
“The only problem was, as I’d paced it, the story didn’t feel like a novel. Not a traditional one, at least. So I began looking for a partnership that would tell the story the way I envisioned. This book is the final culmination of that process: the first story I’ve written intending it to be a graphic novel."
“One of the most frustrating experiences of a writer’s life is having a story that doesn’t work. But there is a delightful experience that goes with that one, hand-in-hand. That’s the day where you finally get it right — when you finally get to see completed something that has required years of labor and worry."
“It is with this sense of delight and long-awaited satisfaction that I finally get to present to you Dark One.”
no subject
Date: 2020-06-13 11:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-16 05:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-16 05:50 pm (UTC)