| name | sanderson-endings-and-revision |
| description | Use when the problem is ending design, climax fairness, bittersweet calibration, revision planning, feedback interpretation, or final draft improvement. Based on Brandon Sanderson's 2025 lectures on payoff, ending design, and revision. |
Sanderson Endings And Revision
Use this skill to land the ending and build a revision process that improves the manuscript instead of merely changing it.
Source Protocol
- Read
references/source-notes.md first.
- Treat revision as a sequence of deliberate passes.
Operating Loop
- Restate the promises that matter most.
- Identify the core emotional payoff.
- List the seeded tools, relationships, flaws, and constraints that the ending should use.
- Design the final choice or final consequence.
- Build the revision pass needed to support that ending.
- Use reader feedback as signal, then diagnose the underlying problem before changing text.
Contract
Ending target:
Main promises:
Emotional currency:
Seeded elements available:
Current ending problem:
Revision pass needed:
Order of passes:
Success test:
Revision Pass Types
- promise and opening pass
- structure and pacing pass
- character and arc pass
- worldbuilding relevance pass
- prose compression pass
- ending and resonance pass
Rules
- Do not let a clever twist break the main bargain.
- Do not obey every beta reader fix suggestion literally.
- If the writer has not earned the ending, move backward and seed rather than trying to brute-force resonance at the last page.
- Keep revision focused on one layer at a time.
